[Cyberyeti]

Trying to see how this should be resolved. Played online EBU competition (qualifier for a national final run by the county which we won anyway so not taking this further for redress, just interested).

2 session event, start of the second session.

We are a board in and nothing is amiss at our table, we've got a huge board and are about to start the second board of the two board round when the director puts up a message that everybody needs to log out and he needs to restart the session. (Apparently the software screwed up and some people were playing opps they'd previously played). We resumed, with a different 2 boards against the same opps.

Is it legitimate to just scrap the board that was correctly played ? and does it matter if it was against the right/wrong opps as far as other tables are concerned ?

It took Andy at realbridge some time to fix, and a pair dropped out as they no longer had time to play, which caused further shenanigans as their score was incorrectly deleted initially, then reinstated because the first half was longer than the second so they'd already played more than half the boards, so it was a bit of a mess but we got there eventually.

[pran]

Cyberyeti, on 2021-April-28, 07:50, said:

Trying to see how this should be resolved. Played online EBU competition (qualifier for a national final run by the county which we won anyway so not taking this further for redress, just interested).

2 session event, start of the second session.

We are a board in and nothing is amiss at our table, we've got a huge board and are about to start the second board of the two board round when the director puts up a message that everybody needs to log out and he needs to restart the session. (Apparently the software screwed up and some people were playing opps they'd previously played). We resumed, with a different 2 boards against the same opps.

Is it legitimate to just scrap the board that was correctly played ? and does it matter if it was against the right/wrong opps as far as other tables are concerned ?

It took Andy at realbridge some time to fix, and a pair dropped out as they no longer had time to play, which caused further shenanigans as their score was incorrectly deleted initially, then reinstated because the first half was longer than the second so they'd already played more than half the boards, so it was a bit of a mess but we got there eventually.

Try this possibility:
The event was screwed up in such a way that none of the boards originally handed out to the tables were intended to be played at all. (This could in fact also happen in an old fashion F2F event!)

Obviously no result obtained on the first dealt hands can then stand?

[Cyberyeti]

pran, on 2021-April-28, 09:12, said:

Try this possibility:
The event was screwed up in such a way that none of the boards originally handed out to the tables were intended to be played at all. (This could in fact also happen in an old fashion F2F event!)

Obviously no result obtained on the first dealt hands can then stand?

Obviously in that case nothing can stand, but what I think happened here is that everybody got the same board that was intended to be played, just not necessarily against the right opponent.

Online everybody plays the same board at the same time in this format.

[blackshoe]

The answer to your question is "yes, it's legitimate". :-)

There's no specific law, and probably no specific EBU (in this case) regulation that addresses this, so it would fall under the Director's general powers to manage the tournament. I think Law 82 is the place to go. While "errors in procedure" are normally considered to be errors by a contestant, the law doesn't actually say that, and setting up the movement incorrectly, even if "the computer did it", is certainly an error in procedure.

[pescetom]

blackshoe, on 2021-April-28, 09:48, said:

The answer to your question is "yes, it's legitimate". :-)

There's no specific law, and probably no specific EBU (in this case) regulation that addresses this, so it would fall under the Director's general powers to manage the tournament. I think Law 82 is the place to go. While "errors in procedure" are normally considered to be errors by a contestant, the law doesn't actually say that, and setting up the movement incorrectly, even if "the computer did it", is certainly an error in procedure.

I agree, although I think it is a likely enough scenario that future regulations should address it specifically.

[mycroft]

Similar idea - Let's say it wasn't the players that were mis-seated, but the board set that was misapplied. You're on vugraph, so they have to be the right boards, but we put out this afternoon's set, or one that hadn't actually gone through the machine.

Strip the boards, restart. No result can be obtained for a board not scheduled to play in this session, yes?

It's always going to hurt whichever side did well on that board.

I think it's an odd situation, but if the conditions of contest say that all tables in this event will play the same boards in the match, and some tables can't play board 1 because of mismatches, then I think board 1 has to be thrown out for all tables, including those where both tables of the match completed the board and played the correct opponents.

[Cyberyeti]

mycroft, on 2021-April-28, 10:43, said:

Similar idea - Let's say it wasn't the players that were mis-seated, but the board set that was misapplied. You're on vugraph, so they have to be the right boards, but we put out this afternoon's set, or one that hadn't actually gone through the machine.

Strip the boards, restart. No result can be obtained for a board not scheduled to play in this session, yes?

It's always going to hurt whichever side did well on that board.

I think it's an odd situation, but if the conditions of contest say that all tables in this event will play the same boards in the match, and some tables can't play board 1 because of mismatches, then I think board 1 has to be thrown out for all tables, including those where both tables of the match completed the board and played the correct opponents.

Sorry should have said, pairs event, so you could do the "2 subfields" thing.

Also IIRC I seem to remember if a board is played against the wrong opps in a pairs event the result stands (although there may be penalties later).

[mycroft]

Ah, but that's a board scheduled to be played. If somehow pairs managed to play board 30 in a 13x2 web, we won't take that score, would we?

Either way would work, I think; it would depend on conditions of contest and/or on decisions of the directors when they found the problem. I don't think saying (without bias) that "board 1 isn't part of the played set" (or, on BBO, "we have to restart, so the entire set of boards is thrown out") is illegal (just unfortunate).

[Cyberyeti]

mycroft, on 2021-April-28, 13:04, said:

Ah, but that's a board scheduled to be played. If somehow pairs managed to play board 30 in a 13x2 web, we won't take that score, would we?

Either way would work, I think; it would depend on conditions of contest and/or on decisions of the directors when they found the problem. I don't think saying (without bias) that "board 1 isn't part of the played set" (or, on BBO, "we have to restart, so the entire set of boards is thrown out") is illegal (just unfortunate).

It was a board scheduled to be played, they just rapidly unscheduled it again. My question was whether if the whole field had played the same board, but possibly not against the right opps what you should do. I suspect what they did, they did because the software couldn't handle computing the results and publishing the hands if you split the results.

[pilowsky]

Just to clarify.
Is this a BBO problem or a realbridge problem?
Does Andy work for both?

[mycroft]

I suspect that they did it because they couldn't fix the movement after, and the first round wouldn't have been the only one with rematches.

I don't like throwing out boards played. But if I have to, I will, as long as the right number get played.

And now you've reminded me of my own personal hell - the 19 table Web with a sitout and using my assistant to avoid a second. Because otherwise I have to throw out an entire boardset, make up a new one and restart the event 20 minutes late...

[Cyberyeti]

pilowsky, on 2021-April-28, 15:17, said:

Just to clarify.
Is this a BBO problem or a realbridge problem?
Does Andy work for both?

Was a RealBridge issue, Andy fixed it, on a Sunday and we're very grateful to him for doing it

My thought was to keep the result of the one board (possibly only for the people playing the right opps) and then restart the session against the right opps.

[blackshoe]

Not sure, but I think that's difficult to do online, if not impossible.

[sanst]

pescetom, on 2021-April-28, 10:27, said:

I agree, although I think it is a likely enough scenario that future regulations should address it specifically.

There’s a lot of online bridge going on, so there should be a whole bunch of problems specific for this game. Would there be anyone recording these to be used when formulating the Laws of Online Bridge? There’s a WBF Code of Laws for Electronic Bridge, dating from 2001, but that has little, if anything to do with online bridge. I suppose these were written for the matches between bridge programs, but I’m not sure.

[pescetom]

sanst, on 2021-April-29, 01:55, said:

There’s a lot of online bridge going on, so there should be a whole bunch of problems specific for this game. Would there be anyone recording these to be used when formulating the Laws of Online Bridge? There’s a WBF Code of Laws for Electronic Bridge, dating from 2001, but that has little, if anything to do with online bridge. I suppose these were written for the matches between bridge programs, but I’m not sure.

I think recording the problems is the least worry, those of us who have directed both f2f and online can all supply a list and probably quite a similar one too. It's the solutions that will be the hard part of the job. But that's no reason to put it off until it is too late and everyone has done their own thing.

[sanst]

pescetom, on 2021-April-29, 03:00, said:

I think recording the problems is the least worry, those of us who have directed both f2f and online can all supply a list and probably quite a similar one too. It's the solutions that will be the hard part of the job. But that's no reason to put it off until it is too late and everyone has done their own thing.

We can only hope that those who are responsible for formulating these laws, will ask for these lists. I’ve no idea whether there is anything going on at the WBFLC.