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Entry result in Bridgmate, in a wrong board number

I would like to be aware of what is your practice in England, in every day club sessions, and in national tournaments sessions, when following incidents happens..

Assume you use Bridgmates for entering results, and you have enable the option to show frequencies, and maybe hands and even analysis of each board. What happens regularly in Greece at some tables, is that players entry one result in a wrong board number, which automatically means that they are aware of the results of another, not played yet, board!

First case, they are just surprised of the results and go play the next one, until later they try to enter the result of the correct board, and BM will display the message that board is already played, so they call you.

Second case, they realize it at once, so they call you before they play the board in which they have noticed some or all of the results.

A) We tend to retrieve scores, so do we let them play, even of what they have seen?

B) Is there any offender, or they are both, as NS enters scores and EW accepts? If you decide to assign an artificial score (unfortunately, as WBFLC tends by all means nowadays to avoid it), what will be the score? 40-40, 50-40, 60-40, 50-50?

Thank you

Comments

  • Sorry was not meant to write B), but B )

  • At national level, in the first case we let both results stand; in the second case we apply Law 16D on extraneous information and usually cancel the board they have seen the result on and award AVE-/AVE-.

  • TagTag
    edited November 2017

    You can also get this situation when, maybe due to slow play, a board is agreed to be played after the session or at the tea-break. North enters some ludicrous result, such as 7NT-13, or a pass out, expecting the result to be corrected later, and they move on. Unfortunately, as the specious result is entered, they see the other results for the board. As a TD, be sure to enter a temporary result such that the players don't see the hand summary.

  • When a board is not played but is to be played later, "Not Played" is a very sensible entry.

  • Players should call the Director if a hand isn't played if they don't know how to enter it. The Bridgemates can be set up so the Director has to confirm matters - the results of the board aren't shown - to allow late play.

  • So long as players are not allowed to enter Not Played then it is easy. When the board is not played to be played later the TD - not the player - enters Not Played.

    While it is reasonable at national level to give Ave-/Ave- to the second board (yes, both sides are at fault - what is checking for?) at the other end of the scale in clubs it is more the case to let them play it and not worry too much.

    While i suppose there will be a problem with sharing boards or the like, setting the bridgemate to accept boards in order makes this type of mistake very rare.

  • I frequently advise roughly as per White Book Para 1.6.7 by saying "It is best to enter the board number and contract at the end of the auction, ready to enter the opening lead as soon as it is made. That makes it very difficult to enter the wrong board number."

    Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live

  • You would be surprised. I recently had a very experienced player who played the wrong set of boards at a relay tablem. Three boards were played and scored against the wrong board numbers before anyone noticed

    Alan

  • @bluejak said:

    ..
    While i suppose there will be a problem with sharing boards or the like, setting the bridgemate to accept boards in order makes this type of mistake very rare.

    Yes I used to do this. Also you can disable 'board order verification' in control software for the relay tables if you want. You can even disable only one of two relay tables, if you begin giving boards every time from the first relay table.

    We also could use Automatic board entry, but also, I think, it is dangerous, if players are analyzing board while entering the result. They may just not notice the board number at all.

  • @bluejak said:

    While it is reasonable at national level to give Ave-/Ave- to the second board (yes, both sides are at fault - what is checking for?) at the other end of the scale in clubs it is more the case to let them play it and not worry too much.

    So in national level, if you decide to show frequencies (to be honest I avoid it), you consider canceling board automatically? Or you let them play being ready to assign an artificial adjusted score Ave-/Ave- ?

  • If, as you seem to suggest, you are loading the hand records into the bridgemates you can set the bridgemates to validate the opening lead and three-quarters of the time this will prevent the players from getting as far as seeing the results if they have entered the wrong board number. They will probably have about five goes and then complain to you that the bridgemates are not working properly.....

  • edited November 2017

    @milton said:
    So in national level, if you decide to show frequencies (to be honest I avoid it),

    The TD/scorer did not decide to show frequencies, it was the decision of the tournament organiser (the EBU Tournament Committee, now Tournament Panel).

    you consider cancelling board automatically?
    Or you let them play being ready to assign an artificial adjusted score Ave-/Ave- ?

    The former.

  • @Paul_Gibbons said:
    If, as you seem to suggest, you are loading the hand records into the bridgemates you can set the bridgemates to validate the opening lead and three-quarters of the time this will prevent the players from getting as far as seeing the results if they have entered the wrong board number. They will probably have about five goes and then complain to you that the bridgemates are not working properly.....

    Yes but validating the opening lead has drawbacks. Some declarers, unfortunately, may enter various leads, in order to test if those cards belongs to their LHO or not!

  • The lead is only rejected when the result is entered and the ACCEPT button pushed.

  • @BarkerBridgeTD said:
    The lead is only rejected when the result is entered and the ACCEPT button pushed.

    That is great! I had that wrong impression so long time! I already checked it, and it's working fine.
    This is really helpful, not only because you can avoid wrong board entry numbers, but also this way you may avoid suspicious contracts!

    Thank you!

  • As to whether you should show previous scores my experience is that the majority of players like it. Our first priority is to run events in the way players enjoy rather than take too much care they do not do anything wrong.

    As to setting the BM so that boards come in order it is rare that causes a problem and the fact that occasionally it will through carelessness seems no reason not to do it. I think players are more likely to get the board number wrong if you do not use this setting.

  • A warning that the board number is out of order seems to work well and accommodates the situation where tables are sharing.

    We've sometimes disabled showing board results when playing an IMPs-scored session. People tend to gripe that they can't see results and percentages, regardless.

  • Yes about imps it is a problem, although a friend TD of mine has chosen to saw players previous scores, saw them even percentages, because they prefer this information than nothing. I was not doing this, when I had a swiss pairs tournament.

    I agree with what Bluejack says, that priority is to run events in the way players enjoy. At least club events. But if I have understood correctly, the upcoming bridgmate firmware (3.0) will support a new feature about this matter, already existing in the new BCS version, : "Average cross-imp and total cross-imp score method added".

    As far as the lead validation feature, I used it in 5 consecutive tournaments last week, and I had only 1 suspicious contract! They had entered 4H, instead 4S, so correct lead could do nothing :). I had an average of 3-5 suspicious contracts in each tournament, most of them because of entering the result in wrong direction, EW instead of NS!

    Some players grumbled about the extra task to be careful for the correct declarer (not anyone from N or S, but the wright one), and the exact lead, (not any small heart, but the 3 of hearts), but they already got used of it!

    Now my main point is this. I introduced at Hellenic bridge federation, and specific at the committee in charge of tournaments, to use lead validation as a feature in Bridgemates, in National tournaments. But they are cautious, because, the player who is using bridgmate, could try to guess a critical queen for example, by entering a random result, the queen he is interested to know it's position, and risking by pressing accept!! If he is lucky, (his chances are 50-50 because the queen is not in dummy, or his hand, but among only the other two players), he knows where trump queen is without any consequences. Otherwise he must call the TD ask him to erase board 14, claiming that he accidentally entered the result, and then what ever arises!

    Please tell me EBU's direction...

    Thank you!

  • So if the guy has a 50% chance of guessing the queen right using Bridgemates and 50% chance at the table (assuming there are no other indicators - there may be), then he would seem to be no better (in fact worse) off.

    Can the TD see what the opening lead was before he erases the score? I would be suspicious if it turned out to be a 'nonsensical' Queen.

  • The BCS results panel will show the deleted result, including the lead.
    I hope the TD would not let North get away with this for long.
    "What board were you trying to enter?" "Where did this contract/lead/result come from?" "Why did you press ACCEPT?

  • I hope the TD would not let North get away with this for long.
    "What board were you trying to enter?" "Where did this contract/lead/result come from?" "Why did you press ACCEPT?

    Yes I totally agree!

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