[Chamaco]

Hi all,

it is the first time I post about an experience of mine of "cheating" or unethical behaviour in tourneys.
I generally play for fun and results is only a side issue on BBo tourneys.

Yet I just played in a really small tourney (3 boards LOL), and I am quite frustrated.

I was declarer in 3NT and I claimed all the trick but one (conceing HJ) , the foirst toime immediately after the spade finesse won, and then a second and third time 2 tricks later.

Opps could obvuiously see that the claim was correct , but they refused all the times, and then toime expired and then we got an Ave -.

There are few things that make me upset, but among them , there is the sense of injustice.
I called the director before time expired and after, but no adjustment.

I do not care much for the result, but I think that:

1) there should be some database where pairs can be reported for OBVIOUS unethical behaviour; sure enough there will be times when I myself (or other innocent players) could be reported unfairly by some opps just angry for a bad result, but on balance it would be easy to check whether soime pairs have reported an abnormal number of times

2) I am disappointed also by the TD. If I claim and the claims are refused more than once, how is it possible that the board is assigned Ave- ?
I believe TD should at least respond to the cal. He was silent throughout, did not even respond to me.
Sure enough, one solution is "do not play anymore his tourneys", but does not sound very satisfying....

[luke warm]

i agree, the 'stop playing in that tourney' irks a little... what do the rules say about claims? isn't it illegal to continue play after a claim? i know this is an unwieldy rule online, but maybe something better could be done in a tourney

[jikl]

The problem with the no further play after a claim is that it is not that difficult to misclaim on BBO, I know I have done it; I know others have done it. With the Less/More structure it is very easy. Perhaps a better way to claim would be total number of tricks, sort of like the bidding, where you can't bid less than the current level. This would be opposite though... if you have already lost 4 tricks, then you couoldn't claim 10, the most you could claim is 9. The only reason I suggest this is that I think it is too easy to accientally click on "Less" one too many times, or forget to click on "Less" and claim too many.

Sean

[hotShot]

I can understand your anger!
And I agree that the board should have been adjusted.

A TD should allways try to find all boards that are Ave- and try to adjust them if possible.

Would be a nice feature if TD's could get a list of AVE- boards at request, so that they can be checked even if not called by a player.

I use to look at the tourney status, the last minute of a round and note the tables that are not ready yet.

I like to play with 1 board/round so that you meet as many other pairs as possible, but
in a survivor or swiss kind of movement it is very likely that tables with an AVE- result are recreated in the next round.
But even with 2 boards/round often slow players are mixed with other slow players that did not finish in time.
Both effects lead to a new round with unfinished boards.

Adjusting the results usualy helps.

[inquiry]

Hi,

A couple of issues here....

1) I deleted the link. This was necessarily, because we don't allow public attacks of members in this forum.. and to say... "these guys cheat or are highly unethical" and while you don;t show their name, and anyone (and I did) can look them up.

2) Being that this was three table event, which frequently have playing director, I wanted to make sure neither of your opponents was the director. I am happy to report that neither where. If one of them was the director, I would have asked that he no longer be allowed to direct/start tourneys.

3) The claim was good and the score should have been adjusted...but some toureys, expecially with playing directors say in their profile/description very specifically NO ADJUSTMENTS.. avoid those like the plague.

4) Database of unehtical players is not pratical because whet would happen to the data? IF it was shared, it would violate the rules of the site and if it wasn't shared what good is it. Sigh

5) When you make the claim,state clearly, Cashing black winners,you get heart at the end. Maybe one of your opponents thought you though the heart was good, who knows?

Ben

[luke warm]

the problem is, a lot (most?) of the tourneys have directors who actually don't know a lot about directing.. rules, etc.. it'd be like me directing a tourney, which i might actually do.. however, if i do i'd be sure to have someone who actually knew the rules... not only couldn't i fake it successfully, i wouldn't even want to try

[SirSatai]

i am trying to adjust all unfinish boards sometmes tourney is finishing and i am adjusting 30 min:) also in tourneys i say all time for this i dont want to say some players dont accept claims or they play slow for A i am optmistic.TD must adjust a lot of Td write their tourney no adjustment no etc zero tolerance but all level of players are playing in tourneys i think we need a section in software like unfinished boards.( do i want to much uday?)

ps. only i dont adjust someboards which one there are no bid

[tenbrvc]

I'm adding nothing new here :-)

I fully sympathize with chamaco, because the same thing happened to me in one tournament where the t.d. hosted a clocked event with no adjustments for ANY reason. Even told us not to ask!

In my case, because of what I perceived as deliberate slow play by the opponents, but they had time to chat amongst themselves, I claimed all the tricks with 2 mins remaining on the clock. They even had the gall to REJECT my claim after about 1 min. I tried to reclaim again but time ran out on me. I had to admit , sorry to say, that it got to me, and I told the opps that they'll never get to play in any of my tourneys, even though I'm normally a very relaxed person and couldn't have cared less

To add insult to injury, it was a survivor tournament, and instead of a very good board, I got an ave- which sent me packing.

I did add them to my enemies list, and asked the t.d. to do the same. Whether he/she did, I do not know, and I am now wondering if there is more I could have done? Should I have notified a yellow so these players could at least be put on a watch list? My feeling is that other players should not have to experience the same thing, because it really ruins the game for the affected players.

That's my two cents worth! Thanks for reading this.

[EarlPurple]

As a director you can look at one player's results but you cannot look at the travelling scoresheet for one particular hand. Might be a useful feature - at the start of the next round you can look at the previous hand's scoresheet to pick out the Ave- hands and adjust them where you can.

Interesting how often, by the way, I get called to a table because a player is frozen, and just as I am about to substitute them they suddenly reappear.

My guess is that they may have been dummy or finished the round early, and saw the clock had 3-4 minutes left so they went off to make a cup of tea or whatever, but actually the round can end sooner if all tables are finished. It would be useful if players knew this. In fact, it can often be better simply to make the rounds a bit longer. Especially the last one.

[helene_t]

Jimmy: you ask if it's illegal to continue playing after a claim.

Obviously it's legal since otherwise the software would have made it impossible. I suppose directors are allowed to make it illegal in their tournaments.

I suppose the reason why it's illegal in f2f bridge is that declarer would know to finesse over the oponent who rejected the claim. But in on-line bridge, declarer just learns that the claim was rejected, not by whom.

Also, false or debatable claims are much more frequent in online-bridge than f2f, so directors don't have time to consider all rejected claims. The only practical solution is to continue playing until the claim is accepted. Of course, you can always call the TD if you think the declarer is abusing his right to continue playing after a rejected claim.

[Chamaco]

helene_t, on Nov 23 2004, 12:38 PM, said:

The only practical solution is to continue playing until the claim is accepted.

Helene, agree with you except - partially - for this point.
I claimed 3 times for an obvious claim (all top tricks, no finesses) and I had not the time to complete the hand.

Had I had the time, I would have done it.
Anyway I'll better stop posting in this thread in order to avoid getting too angry.

[DrTodd13]

Just because misclaiming may be easy does not mean that play should (ideally) continue after a claim. The rules are as they are in f2f bridge about claims for a reason. A rejected claim may give declarer information. There are several instances where there are punishments in bridge for irregularities even though the vast majority of the time those irregularities are innocent mistakes. If you give people the benefit of the doubt then it becomes much harder to punish those who would abuse the system.

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Nov 23 2004, 02:38 PM, said:

Jimmy: you ask if it's illegal to continue playing after a claim.

Obviously it's legal since otherwise the software would have made it impossible. I suppose directors are allowed to make it illegal in their tournaments.

I suppose the reason why it's illegal in f2f bridge is that declarer would know to finesse over the oponent who rejected the claim. But in on-line bridge, declarer just learns that the claim was rejected, not by whom.

Also, false or debatable claims are much more frequent in online-bridge than f2f, so directors don't have time to consider all rejected claims. The only practical solution is to continue playing until the claim is accepted. Of course, you can always call the TD if you think the declarer is abusing his right to continue playing after a rejected claim.

oh i agree with you, the question was meant to suggest that the td should pay special attention to these types of disputes and give full measure to those whose good claims were rejected or, worse, never acknowledged (yeah i know they are harried and a lot of people are pinging them)