[mink]

Some hours ago I was told by the TD, host, and owner of a well-run private club to accept an undo for a card played by a defender. I had called the TD because that opp had immediately repeated the undo request each time I had rejected it. He had insisted that it was a miscklick and also threatened to call the TD. The other opp had called me unfair.

As a matter of fact that private club indeed has a rule that undos have to be accepted if it was a misclick. This of course boils down to "undos must always be accepted", because nobody would admit it was not a misclick. However, this private club rule is in contradiction with "The rules of this Site" (see Bridge Library):

Quote

All members have the right to reject an undo, redeal or claim request for any reason. Members are not required to explain why they have rejected such a request and it is inappropriate for a player to be offended if such a request is rejected. ...

I would really like to know if the the rules of a private club can overrule the rules of the site, and if they can, I would think this is bad for BBO.

In this particular case, I think the rule to accept miscklick undos has its merits, and in principle I support the attitude behind this rule. However, if it turns out that you are forced to believe in any case that it was a misclick, then the rule is really bad. And even if it was a misclick, if it was made by defense the other defender can use the knowledge that his partner has the card that was exposed, and maybe make better decisions subsequently.

Here are some reasons why I do not believe this was a misclick:

• That opp was accused of bad play by his partner in the previous hand, and he apologized with a misclick (he did not request an undo there). I have replayed the board now several times and I was not able to see what might have been the misclick - rather, his partner who accused him had made the error.
  
• opp said he immediately did request an undo, but I had already played a card from the dummy before the first undo request, and I think I remember that undo request took much longer to occur than "immediately"
  
• He repeated his undo request instead of calling the TD
  
• He threatened to call the TD instead of really calling him

And there is another reason why I believe the misclick story was a lie: his cards were ♦K ♦5 ♥J ♣J. ♦ was trump, and therefore the client sorts the cards in the order given here. He originally played the ♣J and replaced that by the ♦K after I finally accepted the undo when the TD had told me to do so. Maybe he can convince his grandmother that he misclicked on the card that was most far away from the intended card, but not me. It is much more reasonable that he suddenly remembered there was excactly one trump left in declarers hand, and he should better draw it.

Of course, when I was asked by the TD why I rejected I was not able to explain all this, and I had not really realized what made me suspicious. All I knew was I was already down 3 for sure, and they should know that too, and the only difference the undo might make was to decide between 800 or 1100 for them. I felt it was really greedy to ask for an undo in such a situation. And as it turned out, the other opp discarded a stupid card in that very trick and it was 800 for them finally. They got about 12 IMPs for that.

Karl

[MickyB]

mink, on May 27 2006, 02:57 AM, said:

And there is another reason why I believe the misclick story was a lie: his cards were ♦K ♦5 ♥J ♣J. ♦ was trump, and therefore the client sorts the cards in the order given here. He originally played the ♣J and replaced that by the ♦K after I finally accepted the undo when the TD had told me to do so. Maybe he can convince his grandmother that he misclicked on the card that was most far away from the intended card, but not me.

If he was using "hand diagrams" mode rather than "pictures of cards", these two would have been next to each other.

[jillybean]

fwiw IMHO undo's cannot be allowed in play. By far the most likely cause is a change of mind or an error caused by inattention – neither of which is grounds to grant an undo.


"a card is touched it is played" - ask the Italian 2003 Bermuda Bowl Team

jb

[luke warm]

nobody has answered the main question that was asked... can the private club rule be in diametrical opposition to bbo's site rules? i'd be interested in knowing that, myself

[jillybean]

luke warm, on May 27 2006, 05:50 AM, said:

can the private club rule be in diametrical opposition to bbo's site rules?

A resounding YES!

The TD or the organization can make and change rules at will and are not even required to publish those rules.

I’m referring here to free tournaments and this obviously is not the official word. I'm sure there are certain rules of the site that everyone must abide by but when it comes to running clubs/tournaments there is a lot of freedom given.

jb

[uday]

Can a club forbid membership to Eskimos? No, on pain of loss of privileges.

Can a club require than UNDOs are to be accepted? Yes.

Is it sensible to require that UNDOs are to be accepted only for misclicks? No, since the players won't always agree that a misclick has occurred. But obviously the TD disagrees, more power to him.

[cherdano]

uday, on May 27 2006, 04:22 PM, said:

Is it sensible to require that UNDOs are to be accepted only for misclicks? No, since the players won't always agree that a misclick has occurred. But obviously the TD disagrees, more power to him.

Well, it becomes a judgement call for the TD. (In effect, one could argue that during bidding, bridge laws would require the possibility of undos for misclicks.) Of course, the TD burdens himself with having to decide which cases are mouse slips versus slips of mind; but it has worked well in HB tourneys e.g. (from what I saw).

Arend

[jillybean]

Undo’s in bidding are not treated the same as in play, undo's in bidding are permitted under law25.

(this is where the TD’s job becomes interesting)
Once a bid is allowed to be changed or retracted the TD’s job is to ensure no Unauthorized Information is used or advantage taken by the offending side. (Law16)

It is very hard to properly enforce these rules online, the td should be called if an undo is requested but laws are often disregarded by or perhaps unknown to online bridge players.


jb

[calabres]

Hi friends

As manager of Private UNIBRIDGE CLUB, i made a website [URL=http://www.freewebs.com/calabres] where the Main Rules of the Club are posted.

But also all the players and kibitzers in our Tournaments can see that in First Announces I make, in 4th place the next is announced:

UNDO POLICY: To reject an UNDO for very, but very clear misclick will not be tolerated. UNIBRIDGE is a Club of FAIR PLAY. Not nice try to win using unauthorided methods.

This is a rule made for the Club, all members know (or must know that ), and they all agree with this one and the rest of the Rules we have.

When a new Member is acepted, is always warned to LEARN the rules we have in the CLUB. And more, with all tournaments posted are uploaded the CONDITIONS OF CONTEST, where this particular rule can be well seen.

I know that many members dont even care to see them, so when problems happened, they feel very surprised about what the TD or HOST tells.

I consider to have NO UNDOS on online play very unfair, cause all we know the problems we have with Computers, Mouses, Software bugs, etc., etc.

Happens to me once in a tournament with NO UNDOS, that i misclick a card and opps made 3 NT +2, when in facts the contract will be set with 4 downs. Was this a most fair rule? I dont think so.

And more, UNIBRIDGE is played by the better players on BBO, all tournaments with several BBO Stars, and I am sure that they play there because they consider it as one of the best tournaments that UNIBIDGE Members can play on BBO.

Many thanks for your attention.
Good luck all in life and bridge ventures.

[luke warm]

i admit it's been a long time since i've read the site rules, but i'd always assumed that bbo's rules outweighed any and all rules an individual tourney might have..

the rule that was posted, "All members have the right to reject an undo, redeal or claim request for any reason. Members are not required to explain why they have rejected such a request and it is inappropriate for a player to be offended if such a request is rejected. ..." seems crystal clear to me, yet uday himself has stated that this rule can be ignored

it seems to me that one reason for rules to exist is to reduce or eliminate subjectivism by individuals, teams, clubs, or tourneys... but when the rulemakers themselves subjectively allow one of their rules to be ignored it makes it hard to know how many others can be abridged...

one would suppose that disallowing eskimoes from playing in a tourney won't be allowed because it is against the site rules... maybe the rules should have asterisks beside them so we can know which can be ignored or abridged?

[mink]

These are the rules of the unibridge club we can find on the website given by calabres:

Quote

1. All BBO rules apply in our Club.

2. Please ALERT and explain with FULL DISCLOSURE all conventional bids. FAILURE to do so might eventually result in ADJUSTED boards.

3. No DUMMY CLAIMS allowed.

4. Do NOT CHAT with your partner during BIDDING and PLAY. If you must please use only ENGLISH.

5. If you feel opps are PLAYING SLOWLY, NOTIFY the TD during the ROUND, not AFTER.

6. Is a TIMED EVENT, so please BID/PLAY promptly and accept VALID CLAIMS.

7. Our policy is ZERO TOLERANCE towards RUDE BEHAVIOR to TDs, partner and opps.

8. If you INTENTIONALLY DISCONNECT or are BADLY BEHAVED,  you will be EXCUSED from the Club

9. It is MANDATORY to announce in all rounds SYSTEM, LEADS and CARDING. For FAILURE two weeks suspension after 2 failures.

A nice set of rules, and I entirely agree with them. The same set of rules is posted along with each tourney, and you can read them before the tourney at any time when you feel like you should refresh your memory concerning the rules. However, I failed to find the rule about undos there. Of couse, when I was new in the club, I had read the text that is posted by the host in every tourney right after it started, but of course, I did not read it every time. Also, I always thought that this is only a reminder for those who did not care to read the rules in the web or attached to the tournament. I never imagined that additional rules are posted by chat.

This is especially true as rule number 1 cited here is in contradiction with the undo rule.

I also think that chat is not a reasonable method to post a portion of text that requires scrolling by the user in order to be entirely read, and that the start of the tourney is not the moment where I would expect players to pay much attention to such a long text - they are busy greeting partner and opps, annonuncing the system, reading opps' announcements, viewing the own hand and starting to bid. Requiring them to carefully read some longer poprtion of text is in contradiction with the requirement to play in time.

At the time when the incident took place I actually was not aware of the undo rule, but I was aware of the rules of this site. I remembered the undo rule at some time after the tourney. I think you cannot really blame me for that.

Thanks for all the replies to my original post. Two ascpects of the incident have not been commented on. First, the opp who had asked for undo do so again and again promptly after I had rejected the request. I think the right way to handle this is to call the TD right after the first reject. Asking for undo again is trying to force the opp directly to do what this fellow believed was right, and I consider this was extremely rude and made me angry. Also, threatening to call the TD instead of really calling him is rude. Finally I had to call the TD myself. I have asked calabres by email if he did something about this, but he chose not to answer me but instead to post in this thread and leave this question unanswered.

The parter of the undo-requester, who is among the 20 top-ranked players of the unibridge club, had called me "not fair" in table chat after I had rejected several undos. I did not have the time to tell the TD about that. However, this remark was rude, too. I think he would not have made this remark if he felt that the repeated undo requests by his partner were rude. This shows that this partnership was not very sensible concerning rudeness. Clearly, I was not in the mood to change my mind and grant the undo request after this. This might have been different if opps called the TD right after the first request was rejected and the TD suggested to me the it really was a misclick by his judgement and he would recommend to accept the request.

But what happened was that the TD told me to accept the request (the last of the series of requests was still pending). I immediately followed the TD's order. But I strongly believe, even if the rule to accpet undos is in effect, he cannot order me to accept. All he can do is adjust the score, assign a penalty to my partnership or throw me out of his private club.

According to the Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge, Law 45C1, there is no undo if the other defender had seen the card, as Jillybean2 pointed out already. So if a sponsering organization really thinks a rule should be in effect that directly violates this law, I cannot cite a law directly telling us what the TD should do in such a situation. But the general notion of the laws is that the TD explains the choices and the player choses, not the TD tells what to chose. Only if it was a crystal-clear misclick, e.g. a card played that was clearly absurd and therefore clearly not intended, you might argue that the TD tells the player that, but even then, if I was the TD I would just recommend it to the player and ask him for his final decision.

After all, accepting an undo is a favor I do. I think I have given many reasons why in this particular case I refused to do that favor. But I learnt that there is in automatism in this club and I am forced to do the favor, no matter how clear it is that it was a misclick and no matter how rude opps behaved. Consequently, I shall not play there anymore.

Karl

[P_Marlowe]

mink, on May 26 2006, 08:57 PM, said:

<snip>
I would really like to know if the the rules of a private club can overrule the rules of the site, and if they can, I would think this is bad for BBO.
<snip>

Hi Karl,

to answer your question: yes

If you own the club, you can make any rule you like,
... you do not even need to make them public.
If somebody plays in your club and is happy fine,
if somebody is unhappy, he can simply avoid playing
there.

That's it.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[P_Marlowe]

uday, on May 27 2006, 09:22 AM, said:

Can a club forbid membership to Eskimos? No, on pain of loss of privileges.

Nice to know .-), ... but of course you are aware, that nobody can
enforce this, ... if someone rejects me, they just have to ommit
the reason, that I am an eskimo.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[uday]

Quote

uday himself has stated that this rule can be ignored

I don't believe I said that. What I said was that a club could insist that UNDOs be granted.

Clubs (and to a smaller extent tourneys) are sort of private spaces in BBO and there are times when common sense must override the letter of the "law" (such as it is). The more private the space, the less business the "law" has in there, imo.

It would be silly to have every rule that was intended for the main bridge club apply to every table at every private club. The rules themselves are simply amplifications of "Be Nice" and you could convince me that "The Wife,child-n-dog beater's private club" should not need to adhere to this.

[mr1303]

Incidentally, Calabres said the following:

Quote

Happens to me once in a tournament with NO UNDOS, that i misclick a card and opps made 3 NT +2, when in facts the contract will be set with 4 downs. Was this a most fair rule? I dont think so.

Personally, I think it's fairer to disallow all undos. In the real world, if you accidentally play a wrong card (as a defender) and attempt to correct it immediately (the equivalent of a misclick) the card becomes a penalty card, and must be played at the first legal opportunity. Otherwise there is an unfair advantage to the defending side

If you genuinely do misclick, your partner has the (unauthorised) information that you possess that card. Since BBO has no method for dealing with penalty cards etc, it would appear that the fairest way is to disallow all undos.

[calabres]

As an answer to the last post, I have to say that the number of times that in live play we draw a wrong card is so small that I can imagine that in percentage could be less than 1%.

Online play is completely diferent.
You can misclik for so many reasons, like I have said befote!!!!!!!!!; mouse problem, someone kick the table of computer, children or pets around, some software bug......enough?

Would be fair the opps make a silly contact that cant never be made, cause the option of UNDOS ALOWED is OFF.

If BBO has a almost perfect software, why the persons in charge put that option to the decision of the tournament host?
Why dont they erase that option from software?

Cause in fact, all people who wants a fair game will apreciate UNDOS ON.

I know lots and lots of players that dont register in tournaments that Undos not alowed, as in tourmaments where TD is playing and adjustments are not made.

Best regards

[paulg]

In the current Laws the zonal authority is given the option of implementing (or not) some Laws and permitted to regulate certain areas of the game.

I feel that a private club regulating the use of the UNDO feature is an analogous situation: BBO establishes a default rule but allows the clubs to implement it or not. Seems a sensible arrangement to me.

Personally I tend to agree with Mark. Tourneys and team matches that I run do not have UNDOs permitted. Everyone understands the situation and it prevents any argument. I do permit them at my table in the main club, have never refused an undo to someone else but only ask for them myself when I know the opposition.

Paul

[Walddk]

I have to agree with Mark and Paul. I don't mind that the UNDO feature is there, but as a general rule I don't think undo's should be granted for misclicks. Accept that you misclicked and get on with things.

This way you won't have to determine if a "wrong" card was played due to a slip of the hand rather than a slip of the mind.

Roland

[barmar]

luke warm, on May 27 2006, 10:34 PM, said:

i admit it's been a long time since i've read the site rules, but i'd always assumed that bbo's rules outweighed any and all rules an individual tourney might have..

I've always assumed that the site rules are mainly oriented towards the Main Bridge Club, where there are no club rules or TDs to follow. They're the default rules in absence of more specific rules for a particular event.

And even in the MBC, the table host is effectively a SO and can set his own rules. For instance, he might have an infirmity that makes it difficult to use his mouse accurately, so he knows that he misclicks often and needs undos, and puts it in the table notes.

[jdonn]

Walddk, on May 29 2006, 12:58 PM, said:

I have to agree with Mark and Paul. I don't mind that the UNDO feature is there, but as a general rule I don't think undo's should be granted for misclicks. Accept that you misclicked and get on with things.

This way you won't have to determine if a "wrong" card was played due to a slip of the hand rather than a slip of the mind.

Roland

If undos aren't granted for misclicks, then what in blazes are they granted for?

Edit: I should add, and if your answer to that is 'nothing' then why are they there?