[blml] When too late

[Eric Landau]

At 11:18 AM 1/5/07, Todd wrote:

>LHO adamantly denied both the early grab for the bidding box
>and the hesitation before the pass.  The director rules
>table result stands.  The director claimed that by waiting
>until the end of the hand to call her that my partnership
>was attempting a double shot, getting the best of either the
>table result or an adjustment, and that I had to call when I
>noticed the hesitation to get a ruling on it.  The reason I
>failed to appeal was that the match was a KO that my team
>won anyways and I was glad to not deal with those opponents
>for the rest of the week.

Although "result stands" may have been the correct ruling, this 
director sounds incompetent to me.  His job is to ascertain the facts, 
and apply the law.  When a particular action is alleged to be an 
irregularity, the motivation for that action may indeed be 
determinative as to whether a particular law has been violated, but the 
*other side's motivation for calling the director* cannot possibly have 
any bearing; either Todd's opponents violated the law to their 
advantage or they didn't.  The TD's determining his ruling on the 
finding that "[Todd's] partnership was attempting a double shot" has no 
basis or justification in the laws.

If my neighbor violates the criminal law and I report him to the 
police, they do not concern themselves with whether I did so because 
I'm an upstanding citizen who believes in law and order or because I 
have a personal grudge against that particular neighbor.  He broke the 
law or he didn't; his motivation might matter, but mine doesn't.

The larger problem is that the ACBL has elected to tell its players 
that they are not supposed to follow the "reservation of rights" 
procedure specified in L16A1, but have never put forth a clear 
alternative procedure that they *are* supposed to follow.  What has 
appeared in The Bulletin on the subject is confusing and 
contradictory.  Call the TD when lefty hesitates and passes?  Or when 
righty then bids?  Or when you've seen righty's hand?  Or seen enough 
of it to believe that he may have been influenced by the 
hesitation?  Should you call if you believe there was an infraction, 
but no resulting damage to your side?

Since we've never been given clear, official answers to these 
questions, it is left to individual TDs to decide the answers for 
themselves.  So we shouldn't be surprised when this leads to the 
occasional totally off-the-wall ruling.


Eric Landau                     ehaa at starpower.net
1107 Dale Drive                 (301) 608-0347
Silver Spring MD 20910-1607