[pigpenz]

Playing in an ACBL tourney yesterdy had the following auction:
1♣ pass 1♥ pass
1♠ pass 4♣ pass
4♠ pass pass pass

no alert on the four club bid, when dummy came down there was only one club so it was meant as a splinter. I then sent msg to opp that he should alert the 4♣ bid as that is part of full disclosure. I then received the reply "SHUT UP".

At end of hand I called the ACBL TD, and informed himof the msg sent and the opps reply and that it was part of full disclosure and what the opps reply was...He said just drop it...which i responded .....you always preach Zero Tolerance but nothing ever gets done. His response was that usually the people that complain about zero tolerance are usually the ones guilty of it.

[inquiry]

The director's reply was inappropriate. But, it is not up to you to teach your opponents how to bid or the rules on alert. What you should have done is call the director and let the director discuss the failure to alert with your opponent.

As far as zero tolerance, the director can not see private chat to you. So what you should do, is capture the screen with the auction, your inquiry and your opponents response and send it to abuse. This way, abuse can make sure the person in question knows not only what ever the ACBL rules coverning this bid are, but what the rules of proper decorum and alerting are on the BBO.

Perhaps the directors comment was meant to imply you should have called him/her to deal with rather than dealling with it yourself. If is impossible for the director to know what and how you phrasaed your initial comment nor verify what the reply was. Let the professionals (ok might not acted like one here) do their job, and you just concentrate on bridge.

[pigpenz]

The main problem is that people make bids all the time that they do not alert. And when they do it they know they are doing it...the way the BBO program is set up there is nothing that can be done after the failure to alert and the passing by the next hand. So there is no alert and the opps with jxxx♠ rebids them at the four level. When holding some anemic hand he opened 1♣ on he should if he doesnt know this pass or bid 5♣'s on.

It fine that they can go tell the offending side after the hand that they should have alerted the bid, but there are times where opps have now missed a chance to double etc over the call if they knew it should have been alerted.

So how do we correct this??
1.adjust board
2.procedural penalty

I realize it is a problem inherent to online bridge, but again if we are gonna have online bridge as close as possible to real bridge then it needs to be addressed, so that TD's have some option at least to roll back the bidding to the nonalerted bid if possible. What i mean by this is that many times the alert isnt posted until someone final puts in a query to find out what the bid means, so then the alert is too late.

Now you say let the professionals handle it? Well I have yet to see an ACBL tournament director on BBO make a ruling. If this were a tourney or club game sometimes the TD has to make a ruling, that is part of being a director.

[awm]

ACBL tourney rules actually state that no call above 3NT is alertable unless it occurs on the first round of the auction. So this type of splinter is not actually an alert. However, I think the reasoning here is that alerting these sorts of bids tends to help partner more than opponents (often opponents aren't bidding at this point anyway). And it is a delayed alert. So perhaps it should've been alerted.

Nonetheless splinters are common enough that you're probably not deserving an adjusted result here.

As for the "shut up" comment, yes that would seem to be a zero tolerance violation. However, I have never seen zero tolerance enforced for rudeness at any level of bridge (and I've seen some pretty awful things). In my honest opinion, ACBL's zero tolerance policy is a joke.

[DrTodd13]

I was once called to testify at a Zero Tolerance ACBL hearing/appeal at a NABC about what I watched transpire at a neighboring table. The behavior was way way over the top though and not the little sorts of rudenesses that people get away with.

[pigpenz]

DrTodd13, on Aug 16 2005, 06:19 PM, said:

I was once called to testify at a Zero Tolerance ACBL hearing/appeal at a NABC about what I watched transpire at a neighboring table. The behavior was way way over the top though and not the little sorts of rudenesses that people get away with.

yes i was on committe in Reno once and some guy slammed door on a girl, and she locked him outside the convention center. Needless to say both were at fault.

[pigpenz]

awm, on Aug 16 2005, 06:11 PM, said:

ACBL tourney rules actually state that no call above 3NT is alertable unless it occurs on the first round of the auction. So this type of splinter is not actually an alert. However, I think the reasoning here is that alerting these sorts of bids tends to help partner more than opponents (often opponents aren't bidding at this point anyway). And it is a delayed alert. So perhaps it should've been alerted.

actually no one was asking for an adjustment.....just what the bid meant. In this case 4♣ is ambiguous since its the suit his partner opened in. As far as the other stuff some bids are alerted to late for there to be action by the way TD's are limited on what they can do when there is a failure to alert and there may or may not have been damage. There is no way to correct a simple problem, "if i had know it was this, i would not have passed" is very common at the bridge table on BBO since they cant take the pass back the damage is already done.

[jikl]

awm, on Aug 16 2005, 06:11 PM, said:

ACBL tourney rules actually state that no call above 3NT is alertable unless it occurs on the first round of the auction. So this type of splinter is not actually an alert. However, I think the reasoning here is that alerting these sorts of bids tends to help partner more than opponents (often opponents aren't bidding at this point anyway). And it is a delayed alert. So perhaps it should've been alerted.

Actually, on BBO this doesn't matter. Your partner cannot see if you alert, only the opponents can. Therefore, I find the ACBL rule of alerting nothing above 3NT as a joke for online bridge on BBO, since no UI can be passed to your partner. For this reason, full disclosure should actually mean full disclosure.

Sean

[pigpenz]

jikl, on Aug 16 2005, 11:17 PM, said:

Actually, on BBO this doesn't matter. Your partner cannot see if you alert, only the opponents can. Therefore, I find the ACBL rule of alerting nothing above 3NT as a joke for online bridge on BBO, since no UI can be passed to your partner. For this reason, full disclosure should actually mean full disclosure.

Sean

Sean,yes thats the point your partner cant see you alerts. So even though you think the opps should know what your bids are that doesnt mean you shouldnt alert. So if you are late on the alert after an opp has passed its too late to be taken care of by the TD in BBO.

[DrTodd13]

Yesterday, somebody told me that there was an incident in Reno several years ago where a rather large man was upset with his partner so he got up, went over, and
farted in his partner's face. I suggest we be very serious about zero tolerance for farting.

[pclayton]

awm, on Aug 16 2005, 03:11 PM, said:

ACBL tourney rules actually state that no call above 3NT is alertable unless it occurs on the first round of the auction. So this type of splinter is not actually an alert. However, I think the reasoning here is that alerting these sorts of bids tends to help partner more than opponents (often opponents aren't bidding at this point anyway). And it is a delayed alert. So perhaps it should've been alerted.

Nonetheless splinters are common enough that you're probably not deserving an adjusted result here.

As for the "shut up" comment, yes that would seem to be a zero tolerance violation. However, I have never seen zero tolerance enforced for rudeness at any level of bridge (and I've seen some pretty awful things). In my honest opinion, ACBL's zero tolerance policy is a joke.

I've seen about three ZT's passed out at the table. Two were in a row at the San Diego Regional a few years back during the Swiss.

[Double !]

DrTodd13, on Aug 17 2005, 02:09 PM, said:

Yesterday, somebody told me that there was an incident in Reno several years ago where a rather large man was upset with his partner so he got up, went over, and
farted in his partner's face. I suggest we be very serious about zero tolerance for farting.

was this in response to the director's ruling that this player had to "pass" at his first opportunity?

[pigpenz]

DrTodd13, on Aug 17 2005, 02:09 PM, said:

Yesterday, somebody told me that there was an incident in Reno several years ago where a rather large man was upset with his partner so he got up, went over, and
farted in his partner's face. I suggest we be very serious about zero tolerance for farting.

an old story about Ron Smith was that an opp called him an asshole at the bridge table. So he called the director and said this lady called me an asshole, which the director replied obviuosly she has played against you before

[McBruce]

DrTodd13, on Aug 17 2005, 11:09 AM, said:

Yesterday, somebody told me that there was an incident in Reno several years ago where a rather large man was upset with his partner so he got up, went over, and
farted in his partner's face. I suggest we be very serious about zero tolerance for farting.

Online?

However will we determine evidence, unless a pair is sitting at two computers in the same room?