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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting article. Thanks for writing it up. As a newcomer to Australia I have seen some interesting things. I note for example that the Stop card is redundant here. Some players are quite tolerant of information exchanged because of that. And of course some players are just rude....Always happens. :)
Dee

Anonymous said...

"Nice game, shame about the people."

Anonymous said...

The worst offender in our Club is a Grand Master. His talent for berating, demeaning remarks have caused me to cease play at that particular club. Correspondence to the Club President (Head Director at that time) proved fruitless. So much for Law 74.