No hands today, just my view on a couple of things that I noticed in the bridge world over the last week.
Montecantini
Last week, the open European Championships were played. The venue looked quite attractive:
A great looking congress hall in an old Italian village, but in fact turned out to be this:
That’s right: a tent, apparently some 15 to 30 minutes outside of the city center, with no good transport or air conditioning. Seriously, with entry fee’s in 100’s of euros a day, you’d expect something better. And this isn’t the first time it has happened. In Menton, 2003, a similar disaster happened: another tent, no air conditioning and 35 degrees in the shade, made seriously bridge impossible. And what the the EBL president at the time (Gianarrigo Rona) write? I personally assume all responsibility for what has happened. I will make amends for this and I promiset hat such a situation will never happen again. 14 years later, the EBL seems to have forgotten. Instead we can read in the Daily Bulletin: "Yves Aubry discussed the venue issue in Montecatini. The first venue was not large enough, the second did not have the required insurance permits….”. Sorry, but that just won the BS prize for me: If the venue isn't large enough for the event, then one should not have gone to Montecatini in the first place but to 1 of the zillions of places in Italy (or Europe, for that matter) that is big enough. I could have understood problems if suddenly an extra 100 teams would have shown up, but the numbers for Montecatini were not that different from the previous events. Similar, one should not have entered into a contract with a second/backup site that does not have the necessary permits.
Pweewww...
Some of you may remember that the Italian pair Rossano-Vivaldi saw their invitation to last year’s mixed team world championships withdrawn a few days before the event. The WBF didn’t give any reasons for this, and technically they don’t have to do this either, but where there is smoke, there must be a fire. Back in September, I said that I hoped that the matter would be sorted out soon but wasn’t holding my breath. Good thing I didn’t, both players were active in Montecatini, but no news on any investigations on this pair.
3rd base coach
You will also remember this video showing Polish players Balicki and Zmudzinski, and the hand signals that they were apparently using. The disciplinary committee of the Polish federation (PBU-DC) did investigate and report on the matter. Their conclusions were interesting:
- After analysing the collected material, to acknowledge the undisputed fact of illegal transmission of information during the play by the pair Balicki-Zmudzinski
- To refrain from punishing the accused due to expiry of the statute of limitations of the offences referred to in section XX [of the PBU bylaws].
The PBU bylaws (as they were in effect in 2014, when the material was recorded) say that any disciplinary case should have been brought forward within 3 months after the event. That time has long expired, thus there was nothing the PBU-DC could have done, and even if they did. they should have stopped at 2. Conclusion #1 might be true, but as the PBU-DC was not competent to rule on this, it has no standing.
Is this serious? Well, the EBL bylaws do not have a statute of limitations, so the EBL can still deal with it. However, the defence for BZ can argue that any committee taking on the case may be biased because of the published decision by the PBU-DC.
In Wroclaw, we saw that in both the open and women pairs, the gold medals were handed out to the wrong pair after an incorrect score was entered into the bridgemate. In Montecatini, this almost happened again. In the last session, as score of 3NT, taking 12 tricks, was entered for the eventual winners, when they actually only scored only 11 tricks. When was this discovered? The day after, when the medals had been handed out.
Fortunately, that made only a 1 matchpoint difference, and as the margin between winners and runners-up was 1.25 matchpoint, the ranking of the pairs didn’t change, but it is not that hard to see that it could have made a difference.
Now, I don’t doubt for a second that this was an honest mistake, but it does show that if bridge wants to be taken seriously as a sport, we need a better way to ensure that scores are entered correctly. Or can you imagine any sport where, after medals are handed out, somebody comes up with “I’m sorry, but we didn’t add things up correctly, let’s do this again”? No, neither can I.
A solution would be, other than more electronic checking of the results, to look at the process in the minutes after the game.
Right now, a pair is free to go after the last hand, with no obligations to check scores or do anything else. In other sports, there are well established procedures: for example, one has to visit doping control, put his car/bike/... in a special area for later inspection, go to a press area to meet reporters, etc. Only when all formalities are done, the players are free to go.
In bridge, we can do the same: after the game, send the players to a separate area and provide them with an overview of scores entered. Have the players review this list and sign-off, only they can leave. Don’t provide percentages or rankings, just the contract and tricks. That way it can be done quickly but people will be careful as they won’t know if they are still in contention.
Line-ups in Lyons
Some line-ups are about to change too. The biggest news is probably that the Monegask bridge federation has 2 new Italian members: Lauria and Versace, who seem to have gone after the big money handed out by Zimmermann and applied for a chance of bridge nationality. Interestingly, a few years ago, Lauria said (after the move of Fantunes) that he would never consider leaving Italy for cash. Things can change.
Back in the Bermuda Bowl in Lyon will be Benito Garozzo, representing Italy at age 90, and 56 years after his first appearance in the event in 1961. I believe that makes him the oldest competitor in the Bermuda Bowl ever. His teammate is the Italian talent Donati, at age 18. I don’t think that he will be the youngest participant ever. My guess for that is Augustin Madala, in 2001 at age 14 or 15.
Practical stuff
I had some problems with the hosting machine of this site and had to do a clean-up on all pdf versions of flyers and such that were linked in from the blog entries. As this material is obsolete by now, I’m sure you are not going to miss is but in case you do, contact me.
Time to go and play bridge again…