[McBruce]

Dummy:
♠ Q T 6 4
♥ Q
♦ Q 8 5
♣ T 8 4 3 2

Declarer:
♠ A 7 3
♥ A K J 9
♦ J T 4 3
♣ A Q

After being disconnected and getting back in for this hand following a sub replacing you, you open this hand 1♦ in third chair, all vul.
Partner responds 1♠, you rebid 2NT and partner raises to 3NT.
Opening lead is a heart, you win in dummy and take the club finesse, which loses.
Opening leader now cashes the ace of diamonds and puts partner in with the king, and a heart is led.

You're going to make four hearts, two diamonds, the ace of clubs, and spades will decide your fate.

My contention is this: if you spend the last seconds of the round cashing red suit winners and time runs out, when it is clear you will come down to a straight guess in spades no matter what you do, why should I give you any part of making 3NT if there is one play that succeeds? When time is short, and you are the cause, I think you lose the right to delay a key decision which the computer will always get right if the hand is not finished in time.

If RHO returns a club, that's different, you can't lose a spade without losing at least one more club, I'm OK with taking winners before deciding how to play the spades, and as long as you do it quickly I can give you something. But this declarer (who is local but disconnected 2-3 times per game) played out the winners slowly and never even tried to guess the spades. I ruled down one (which turned out to be zero matchpoints on a seven top) even though finessing the ten would have worked.

[m00036]

McBruce, on 2020-September-22, 12:08, said:

Dummy:
♠ Q T 6 4
♥ Q
♦ Q 8 5
♣ T 8 4 3 2

Declarer:
♠ A 7 3
♥ A K J 9
♦ J T 4 3
♣ A Q

After being disconnected and getting back in for this hand following a sub replacing you, you open this hand 1♦ in third chair, all vul.
Partner responds 1♠, you rebid 2NT and partner raises to 3NT.
Opening lead is a heart, you win in dummy and take the club finesse, which loses.
Opening leader now cashes the ace of diamonds and puts partner in with the king, and a heart is led.

You're going to make four hearts, two diamonds, the ace of clubs, and spades will decide your fate.

My contention is this: if you spend the last seconds of the round cashing red suit winners and time runs out, when it is clear you will come down to a straight guess in spades no matter what you do, why should I give you any part of making 3NT if there is one play that succeeds? When time is short, and you are the cause, I think you lose the right to delay a key decision which the computer will always get right if the hand is not finished in time.

If RHO returns a club, that's different, you can't lose a spade without losing at least one more club, I'm OK with taking winners before deciding how to play the spades, and as long as you do it quickly I can give you something. But this declarer (who is local but disconnected 2-3 times per game) played out the winners slowly and never even tried to guess the spades. I ruled down one (which turned out to be zero matchpoints on a seven top) even though finessing the ten would have worked.

Yes it's frustrating when players take that approach but ultimately it's the TD's job to award a score that is fair to both sides based on the play that was completed (they are not breaking the laws by not playing quickly, even if they have broken another law by being the cause of the initial delay). Arguably the TD should add time to the round to ensure that the board is completed, and then apply a warning or procedural penalty after the event. A weighted score should have been awarded in this case using an offline scoring system. The problem is with communication - there is no easy way to tell a player to choose your finesse on BBO compared to face-to-face; There may well also be connection issues that are not the player's fault, and any player in that situation would play out their winners first before committing. It's just the nature of online bridge.

Anyway my award would, if I'm not allowed to extend the round, be something like 60% for -1 and 40% for =. If you only use BBO scores then it depends on the tournament regulations (since it wouldn't be following the laws of bridge), but you may well just choose a score from the traveller (even if it's unrelated to 3NT) that is closest to the MP score they would have got with that weighting, giving any generosity to the non-offending side. 3NT-1 is a tempting score to award but has very little justification (unless those are the rules of your event, in which case that would be absolutely fine).

[McBruce]

m00036, on 2020-September-22, 13:39, said:

Yes it's frustrating when players take that approach but ultimately it's the TD's job to award a score that is fair to both sides based on the play that was completed (they are not breaking the laws by not playing quickly, even if they have broken another law by being the cause of the initial delay). Arguably the TD should add time to the round to ensure that the board is completed, and then apply a warning or procedural penalty after the event. A weighted score should have been awarded in this case using an offline scoring system. The problem is with communication - there is no easy way to tell a player to choose your finesse on BBO compared to face-to-face; There may well also be connection issues that are not the player's fault, and any player in that situation would play out their winners first before committing. It's just the nature of online bridge.

Anyway my award would, if I'm not allowed to extend the round, be something like 60% for -1 and 40% for =. If you only use BBO scores then it depends on the tournament regulations (since it wouldn't be following the laws of bridge), but you may well just choose a score from the traveller (even if it's unrelated to 3NT) that is closest to the MP score they would have got with that weighting, giving any generosity to the non-offending side. 3NT-1 is a tempting score to award but has very little justification (unless those are the rules of your event, in which case that would be absolutely fine).

I reluctantly suppose you have this right, but my weighting of the probabilities would render in the fact that I'm not even sure this player would even consider playing the ten and the offenders might get at most 20% of 3NT making, so 0% is close to what their score would have been. As for extending rounds, most who direct online games avoid this like the plague. 60% of the players manage to finish several minutes ahead of the end of each round. The remaining 40%, especially when up against each other, will take all the time they are entitled to, playing sequences of winners with zero chance of getting a favourable discard and recalculating the deal after each play. One table earlier this week took 10 minutes in a 14 minute round on a 6NT in the first board, and discussed it for another 2 minutes while holding cards for the second board! (40-40 seemed an inadequate penalty for such an idiotic lapse.) Give these people an extra minute once, and they will demand it forever. And the 60% who play on time and already wait longer than they should will choose to play somewhere else. (Don't forget that you actually CANNOT give an extra minute: adding one minute to the setup adds one per board per round, adding at least two unless you are playing one-board rounds. BBO could help a lot by changing this variable to seconds per board instead of minutes per board. We're currently at 7 and 6 would be a chaos of unfinished results, but 6.5 minutes would speed up the offenders and placate the speedsters.)