Sunday, October 6, 2013

How much respect does the chief director deserve?

I treat preople with respect. The respect they deserve. The chief director of New Zealand Bridge, how much respect does he deserve? 

Today I asked him if there was a regulation that meant the law (law 91B) should not be interpreted as written. His answer was a succint, emphatic, all encompassing, "No!" 

Let me remind you of the laws, which I would hope Geursen has at least a passing acquaintence. In particular law 81A2. Law 81 deals with the tournament director's duties and powers. Quite an important law to know and understand if one is a director one would assume. 

"Law 81A 2. Observance of Laws and Regulations The Director is bound by these Laws and by supplementary regulations announced by the sponsoring organisation"

To me this seems quite a strong law. "bound" to me is suggestive of tied tightly, cannot vary from. 

In my question to Geursen it was implicit that the law should be followed. The director after all is bound by it. According to Geursen there is also no regulation that suggests any different interpretation. One would think that therefore any director with any remnant of integrity or just a sense of duty to that which he is charged would be "bound" by the law and further influenced by the quite obvious negative inference from there being no contrary regulation to rule according to the written law - "these laws". Not so Geursen. For reasons unknown, as he has made no attempt to explain, he appears to believe he is above the law and had some god given or inate right to flout the law and rule any which way he himself chooses. And that his charge, director in charge Murray Wiggins is similarly unconstrained by the laws. 

I cannot begin to comprehend the arrogance of that position. I am a NZBridge qualified tournament director. Not to inflate my own position, but simply to illustrate that I do have at least a semi-decent understanding of the law, when I qualified as a club and tournament director I received one of the highest marks obtained in those examinations. In my view, as a director myself, the primary role of a director is to be a servant to the players, in part that is done by applying the laws and announced regulations of the game. It is not achieved by making up some regulation or interpretation to achieve your own end. That is arrogance. What possible motive can a director have for knowingly misapplying the laws and regulations? Remember Geursen freely admits that there is no regulation that allows a ruling contrary to this law's plan meaning. 

This is not the first time Geursen has ruled according to his own agenda. There have been many occasions over the years. At the 2006 national trials he allowed an opponent on the same side of the screen to point out an infraction that had not transferred through the screen. The screen regulations unambiguously said that was an infraction. In a previous NZ pairs he allowed a fouled board to be corrected using a different formula than was written in the regulations. In one interprovincials he refused to allow an appeal by the CD youth team because he thought the time limit in the announced regulation meant 'match' when it said 'session' and two matches were being played in each session. Even if he thinks that was the intention he is bound by the announced regulation. Simply it is not the director's right to write the laws and regulations after the fact. It is the director's responsibility to rule according to the laws and announce regulations. It is patently absurd for the director to make up rules or equivalently rule contrary to existing rules after the fact. 

So basically Geursen and his underling Wiggins are knowingly willing to rule contrary to the written law when there is no regulation nor interpretation that allows them to do rule. 

How much respect does this deserve?

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

congress fun

Yesterday I was informed that I was disqualified from the national bridge Congress. No reasons were specified.

Mr Wayne Burrows

The Director-in-Charge of the National Bridge Congress had disqualified you from further participation in the National Bridge Congress. This has been confirmed by the tournament organiser as required by Law 91B.

Richard Solomon
Convenor
National Bridge Congress Organising Committee

This is a clear and flagrant abuse of the laws of bridge. Law 91B is

Law 91B The director is empowered to disqualify a contestent for cause, subject to approval by the tournament organiser.

It is unclear to me what was considered 'for cause' as no reason has been formally given to me nor was I given any opportunity to attend a hearing.  I will write more on the events leading up to this later.

Law 91B clearly gives the director the right to disqualify a contestant.  However I was not a contestant to which such disqualification can be applied.  I was playing in the New Zealand Teams on a six person team.  That team and not any individual player such as myself was a contestant in this event.        

Contestant: in an individual event, a player; in a pair event, two players playing as partners throughout the event; in a team event, four or more players playing as teammates        

This is plain that the team is the contestant so the director would have to disqualify a team as the power is only given to disqualify contestants.

The events leading up to this incident began in round six of the ten qualifying rounds.  We were playing against National Recorder Noel Woodhall and George Masters. Noel indisputably hesitated over my two club overcall.  This fact has not been challenged. George doubled.  At which point I attempted to establish the facts of the hesitation. George commented, perhaps inappropriately but this was not challenged,  that he had his bid. While my attention was with George on my right, on my left Noel threw his cards and pen on the table so the made an noticable bang. I turned to find him looking intently at me and he made an audible scoff. It was obvious to me that he was showing dissent at me drawing attention to his break in tempo. Although as stated above he never disputed the tempo break.

The director was called. While he came back late to get further information I am unaware of any ruling being made.  Although that is by the by.

The director, Alan Joseph, was also made aware of Noel's  discourtesy. In my view the director essentially ignored the discourtesy.  I briefly left the table to get some water and calm down a little as I was visibly shaken and literally shaking.

Later in the match when we were already well behind time Noel and George had a long uncontested relay auction which was slow which resulted in them taking 12-13 minutes to play one board.  It looked like we were going to forfeit two boards. We ended up forfeiting one board although I suspect we started the last board after time had elapsed.  I couldn't read the time clock nor did I hear the director's announcement of the end of play. When the director was at the table Noel gave an additional back handed insult that we might get finished if I stayed at the table referring to when I left upset.

At the end of the match I approached the director in charge Murray Wiggins to emphasise that I was unhappy with Noel's discourtesy.  Murray talked with Noel and I in the presence of Pam and George and maybe some others. He did not in my view address the discourtesy at all.

I am not completely sure of the sequence of events at this point. The conversation degenerated though. At one point Murray physically pushed me. I was distressed by this so much that I told him that if he touched me again I would call the police. At another point in frustration I said "this is useless if nothing is done about discourtesy". I challenged Murray that it was in his view ok to be discourteous and that if so I would be rude to my opponents. He made it clear that he would send me home if that happened. In my view this is a clear double standard when he allows the National Recorder to be rude to me. There were further threats from Murray that he would send me home. When I showed ambivalence to his threats he acted on the threat.

Later I was informed,  I am not sure by whom but discussions involved Alan Turner, team mate and NZBridge board member,  and Kay Nicholas, chairperson NZBridge, that I was allowed to play so I played the next match. Late in the lunch break I was informed that I was not allowed to play and did not play the last three matches.

Alan Turner and Kay Nicholas both independently asked me to apologise unreservedly to Murray Wiggins. He believed apparently that I said he was useless. I have no recollection of this nor do I believe that he challenged my comment quoted above. I was unwilling to make such an apology. However I did go with Kay Nicholas as a witness to Murray and said I believed that there had been a misunderstanding and that I did not intend any comment I made to be personal to him.  I stated I believed I said that this is useless not he was useless.  Murray did not accept this apology and the conversation degenerated into a he said you said type dispute.

Later Richard Solomon told me that there was no mention of this apology when the committee discussed the decision that resulted in the above letter. He was surprised to learn that an apology had been offered. This illustrates the problem of not allowing me to be heard when they make a decision to impose sanctions against me.
                                                                                                       

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Discourtesy

My friend, Richard Hills, Australian bridge and bridge laws expert often describes Law 74A2 as "...the most important Law in the Lawbook". Law 74 is entitled "Conduct and Attitude" and A2 is specifically about causing annoyance or embarrassment to other players. Fortunately in the few encounters I have had with Richard across the green baize he has reported that the matches have been played with fine spirit.

Naturally Law 74A2 follows immediately from Law 74A1 which instructs players to remain courteous. Here is the precise wording of those two laws:

"LAW 74 - CONDUCT AND ETIQUETTE
A. Proper Attitude
1. A player should maintain a courteous attitude at all times.
2. A player should carefully avoid any remark or action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with the enjoyment of the game."

Courtesy is defined at www.dictionary.com as "excellence of manners or social conduct; polite behavior".

I am currently in Auckland at the Air New Zealand Koru lounge on my way home from the excellent and thoroughly recommended Gold Coast Congress hosted by the Queensland Bridge Association. By and large the huge majority of players at that congress are courteous and a pleasure to play against. Sadly my eight days of bridge was marred by three discourteous incidents involving five or six players (three pairs). One incident occurred in round eleven of the teams and two occurred in the Swiss Pairs in rounds one and nine.

I will discuss each of the three incidents. However, one incident stood out in that one of the perpetrators of the discourtesy and rudeness, Dr Alan Doddridge, had an official capacity at the event of Recorder. A Recorder is someone a player goes to when such discourtesy and rudeness occurs at the table. Dr Doddridge was not only a Recorder at the Gold Coast Congress but in New Zealand he is the Recorder for the Central Districts Region. As such, I believe he has a special responsibility to behave in a manner that embodies Law 74. Sadly, in my limited experience this is far from the first occasion where Dr Doddridge has behaved poorly at the bridge table.

As I stated above, the first incident occurred in round eleven of the teams in a match against the SAWICKI team. We were playing against Henry Sawicki and Rachel Frenkel. This pair play a non-standard system which they call "Medium Club" and is based on a strong but limited 1C opening with other openings at the one level limited and canape in style. That is they frequently open a shorter suit and rebid in a longer suit.

On the hand in question, board eight of that match, the uncontested auction from my opponents was:

1H 2D; 3D 3S; 4S 5D; Pass

There were no alerted bids. I was on lead and asked for an explanation of the auction - "Can you explain the auction please?". The obligation of the opponents at this point is to provide all information they have from partnership agreement, explicit or implicit, and partnership experience. The wording in the law is:

"When explaining the significance of partner’s call or play in reply to opponent’s enquiry (see Law 20) a player shall disclose all special information conveyed to him through partnership agreement or partnership experience but he need not disclose inferences drawn from his knowledge and experience of matters generally known to bridge players." Law 40B6a.

To be fair I got some good information from Ms Frenkel. She said she believed her partner was 4441 and indeed he was. However this was a summary of the whole auction and I wanted to know what inferences were available at each bid. In this regard Ms Frenkel was initially unwilling to tell me the minimum length for the 3D raise. Mr Sawicki's answers were far less revealing. He told me the auction was "just normal bridge". Whatever it was, a potentially canape auction, is not just normal bridge. So obviously I felt I was entitle to more information. In particular, at some point he added 3S was "natural". "Natural" would normally mean a four-card suit. However the subsequent auction seemed to reveal that 3S was not "natural" since when the suit was raised his partner retreated back to 5D, which while not unheard of it is extremely unusual to retreat from a major suit fit to a minor suit fit. These opponents were an experienced partnership and I felt I had an entitlement to more information about their partnership experience in these situations. Indeed the auction suggested that they had some experience as Sawicki correctly divined that Frenkel's 5D was a correction and not a slam try. Additionally, it turned out that Frenkel had three card support for Sawicki's hearts which she had not mentioned so there seems to be an inference at 3D that Sawicki did not have five hearts. This information was never conveyed to us.

Anyway that is just background. The purpose of writing is to illustrate the discourtesy. Rather than attempt to answer my more probing questions Sawicki's response was "this is ridiculous", "you are childish", "this is not bridge". These sort of comments continued when the director came to the table, some of which were repeated. Sawicki not content with insulting me added to the discourtesy by insulting the director, Jan Peach. While Peach asked for the comments to cease she did little to enforce Law 74 and essentially allowed Sawicki to continue his barrage of insults.

The second of the three incidents occurred in the first round of the Swiss Pairs, where my partner and I were pitted against Alan Doddridge and Jenny Wilson. Early in the match, I was on lead with AKx club. I lead the club ace and five to the QJ came in the dummy. In this situation I expect my partner to give me count. We play reverse count and he played a high card which showed me he had an odd number of clubs. Doddridge followed. This meant that partner had 1 or 3 clubs. If one I could give him a ruff and if three which I judged much more likely the second club was cashing. On the actual hand the danger of setting up the clubs was minimal as the dummy was short of quick entries so I continued club. Partner completed his echo confirming three which left only two clubs for Doddridge. However on this trick Doddridge partially pulled out a card, sat back in his seat, then leaned forward before fulling detaching a card and playing it. I trusted my partner and was not deceived by this byplay and so switched to another suit. Unfortunately, though when my partner got in he thought I might be out of clubs and so continued a club.

At this point, I tried to get agreement about the slow play on the second round of clubs. Doddridge did not deny the slow play and invited me to call the director. However in doing so he showed obvious dissent. Before the director arrived he sat back and said "deja vu" which I believed was designed to taunt me and certainly wasn't in compliance with Richard Hills' most important law - "carefully avoid any remark or action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with the enjoyment of the game."

When the director arrived at the table, Doddridge said in an agitated way "He is accusing me of cheating". Again this is not carefully avoiding any remark or action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player. It is also in violation of the etiquette Law 74B5 "summoning and addressing the Director in a manner discourteous to him or to other contestants." Just to be clear, Doddridge's statement to the director is discourteous to me since I had made no accusation of cheating.

A complaint of a player playing (or bidding for that matter) out of tempo is never in the first instance considered an accusation of cheating. There is a presumption in the laws that players do not cheat at bridge. A tempo break may be made for many reasons, most of which are accidental or otherwise unintentional. That is not cheating. Nevertheless, the laws allow for redress whether or not there was intent. This is explained clearly in Law 73F for violations of Law 73 - Law73D deals with variations in tempo such as Doddridge's slow play on this hand. The key phrase is "who could have known".

"When a violation of the Proprieties described in this law results in damage to an innocent opponent, if the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from a remark, manner, tempo, or the like, of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have known, at the time of the action, that the action could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score" Law 73F.

The "could have known" clause essentially means that even though you are not cheating, for the purpose of redress but not for disciplinary penalty, you will be treated as if you were cheating since your actions may have disadvantaged the opponents. The distinction is subtle but it is significant and a director call on a tempo issue is not ipso facto an accusation of cheating.

I would have hoped that Doddridge a regional recorder would have had a good understanding of this distinction but apparently not.

I consider his dissenting remarks and niggly comments which continued beyond that described above to be a form of bullying. The way I interpret things Doddridge's rude, discourteous comments were intended to make me feel bad for calling the director.

In this occasion after the director settled things down and play continued I received further abuse from Jenny Wilson who said in a demeaning way "This is why we don't play at the Palmerston North Bridge Club any more." Maybe I have it wrong and it was an honest statement applauding the standards at the Palmerston North Bridge Club where directors are called for infractions and players are not allowed to be abusive to their opponents but I think not. In case it needs to be pointed out this comment by Wilson is a clear violation of Law74A2.

Wilson and Doddridge both continued their disregard for Law 74 by repeatedly telling me to stop when I was simply calling the director for their repeated improper behaviour.

Unbelievably, Doddridge (and Wilson) seem to believe that I have done something wrong. I was accused of both being a bully and being rude. I talked at length with the chief director Laurie Kelso about this incident with respect to asking his advice on how I am supposed to behave when there is an infraction at the table and the opponents (with a history of this sort of behaviour) make rude, discourteous, niggly, annoying and hurtful comments to me. In the final analysis he offered the opinion that I had done nothing wrong in this incident. From which I interpret and it seems obvious that it is proper to call the director when I perceive there is a possible infraction or irregularity and that it is proper to call the director when my opponents are repeatedly rude to me.

The third incident was similar when playing the ninth round of the Swiss Pairs against Jeanne Hey and Joan Valentine. On this occasion I was declaring a no trump contract on the S9 lead with J74 in dummy and Q852 in hand. I asked about the leads and was told that the lead 4ths, tops of sequences and top of nothing. Consequently I decided to play the jack from dummy which lost to the ace and a spade came back which I ran to the seven but the opening leader played the ten and then cashed the king. So the lead had been from KT96. I played out the hand and then asked the leader about the leads and was told "I can lead anything". I called the director. Subsequently she also told the director that they had the unusual agreement that if they lead an odd card they want the suit led back. The director adjusted the score one trick in our favour based on the misinformation. Then the fun started. Both opponents started making snarky comments aimed at both myself and my partner - although what my poor partner had done I have no idea, he had sat there as dummy. The comments included "I am disgusted in west", "I am disgusted in both of them", "Don't worry he has to live with himself" etc.

I suppose I could report this to the recorder. Oh but Doddridge is the recorder. He probably thinks its fair game for my opponents to insult me. After all I did call the director.

In my view its unacceptable that any one behave like this at the bridge table to fellow competitors. Its particularly bad when this behaviour is perpetrated by Doddridge and Wilson given Doddridge's responsibility as recorder. Yes I include Wilson's behaviour on a similar level to Doddridge given that by playing with her he, as recorder, is giving tacit approval to her behaviour whilst simultaneously modelling that poor behaviour.

This is far from the first time that Doddridge's behaviour has been substandard at the bridge table and around other bridge related situations. New Zealand Bridge is well aware of his poor behaviour and has so far chosen to take no action against him.

I call on New Zealand Bridge to take action against Dr Alan Doddridge for his repeated inappropriate behaviour.