[blml] When too late

[Eric Landau]

At 11:01 AM 1/5/07, Ed wrote:

>On Jan 5, 2007, at 10:50 AM, Eric Landau wrote:
>
> > I asked about this originally in the hope of finding or
> > figuring out what the ACBL's rationale for not allowing reservation of
> > rights is.
>
>What makes you think they have one? :-)
>
>A BIT is an irregularity. Law 9 requires that, when attention is
>drawn to an irregularity, the director be called immediately. The
>provision for "reservation of rights" in Law 16A1 is the *only*
>exception to this in the Laws. I suppose one could argue that in the
>interests of consistency one should not allow this exception. But
>then the ACBL muddied the waters with the wording of their election,
>which seems to imply you have to wait for some action by the
>recipient of the BIT before calling the TD - which, btw, would be in
>contradiction to law 9. So I don't think the ACBL has a coherent
>rationale for the way they want Law 16A1 to be.

I do not believe that "a BIT is an irregularity", and therefore do not 
see reservation of rights as an "exception" to L9.  A BIT certainly is 
not an "infraction", which is used in TFLB, if not as an exact synonym 
for "irregularity", as at least very closely related.  Indeed, L73D1 
tells us explicitly that "to vary the tempo... does not in itself 
constitute a violation of propriety" (another very closely related 
term) -- what does is "inferences... drawn... [not] by an 
opponent".  BITs are an inevitable and unavoidable aspect of the game, 
routine and "regular", and L73D1 seems to acknowledge that fact; it 
specifically calls avoiding BITs "desirable, though not always required".


Eric Landau                     ehaa at starpower.net
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