[wnt53]

Some of my regular players are seriously slow players. They spoil a tournament for the majority. I cannot count the number of times they have been encouraged, cajoled, etc to speed up. They ignore general messages (because he must be talking about someone else not me!). For a while when I stopped making adjustments, there was an improvement, but then a bit of gamesmanship started to creep in. Faced with an impossible contract and a bottom, all of a sudden they had internet connectivity problems until the board was swept away and 50% awarded. If I allow more time, faster players get bored. I considered a 'yellow card' system - eject them after a few offences for a few games to help them mend their ways. The trouble is apportioning blame. Not a happy place. Same goes for awarding a A-- for an incomplete board for persistent offenders. At least that has some objectivity about it - no smoke without fire, etc. Hmmm, maybe... A personal message from the chairman. Tricky, for the most part the people concerned are friends and respected members of our community. Name and shame? Bold move. Perhaps too bold.

Others must have the same problem, Tips?

[mycroft]

Assuming you are not a playing director (or you are, but you are fast), going around to the "usual suspects" tables and pointing out things like "you have two boards to play, and 7 minutes" helps.

For those for whom it doesn't, my standard IRL rule was "I'll just pull the board the first time, but I award A+/A- the second time unless your opponents admit fault." and I'd go as far as to say to pairs after enough "warnings" that "if I have to pull a board from you at all, I will award A+/A- unless the opponents admit fault." (*) Now it's different IRL where we "can't stop play" of a board that was started, and yes, I frequently got a pair that took 20 minutes to play the first round, and 15 minutes to play every round thereafter, just fast enough that they didn't lose a board. They would *reliably* do that. I have been known to call rounds early "accidentally" to catch them up.

If you need to assign scores repeatedly to "last hands", and it turns out that a pair is frequently in the "needs assignment" category, don't play it best for that pair. I don't mean "I rule you play your K under the A", but "if there's a guess/drop or a two-way finesse, unless the play proves which way you had decided to play it, you'll get it wrong."

This is another place where the ability to assign a procedural penalty in BBO would be nice, unfortunately.

(*) I remember showing up to a regional on Tuesday to work the third session of the week. I was taken aside and notified that [a certain, very good but well-known slow, player] was told Monday: "our rule for slow play is to warn the first time we have to take action, and penalize the second. This - is a warning." Oddly enough, that, combined with his partner's continual nagging reminders, resulted in no slow play from that table all week.