[blackshoe]

Dan Plato, whose title is "Tournament Operations Assistant", replied as follows to my email to "rulings":

Quote

Applying the Laws of Duplicate Bridge is important (We actually have clubs write in asking that all revokes be charged two tricks--always!) but in a case like this ACBL would not choose to interfere with a perspective that still maintains the spirit of the law--preventing UI.

On the flip side-- I would hope that Club Management will also be encouraging and positive about those times when players forget to do the sorting, not assessing penalties in the spirit of that verb "should."

The message was actually much longer, quoting the Introduction regarding the use of "should" in the laws, and chastising me for saying "requires" instead of "should" and quoting as well Chapter 4 of the ACBL Handbook, which requires clubs to follow the laws, and discussing his belief that the purpose of the law is to prevent UI. Then he said what's quoted above.

[Vampyr]

Quote

We actually have clubs write in asking that all revokes be charged two tricks--always!

I'll bet that 99% of players in the world and 100% of directors would prefer this.

[Lanor Fow]

 Vampyr, on 2013-September-22, 15:04, said:

When I take my cards out of the board, I count them in a manner that causes them to end up unsorted, even if they started sorted (The reason I know this is that at EBU congresses they use a lot of new packs of cards, so the hands are sorted when the boards are first given out). I wonder if a lot of people do the same (unsort them by counting, that is, not use new packs of cards ).

I probably should. At the moment I shuffle the cards before looking at them in ebu congresses when I don't know they have already been played. This has got me both strange looks and comments from oppos.

(edit to clarify) - I do this because the only cards out of place for me with the ebu new cards are the aces. Moving just the aces tends to give away quite a bit of UI

[aguahombre]

Being a little dense: If the boards are prepared in advance, who cares if they are new? If they are to be shuffled before starting the first round, who cares if they are new?

[mycroft]

If they're dealt from new decks through an auto-dealer, the cards will be read in order and placed in order (except, I guess, for the minor aces, or all aces depending on the way the deck is built). If they're dealt from played decks through an auto-dealer, the cards will be read in the order they were played, and the hands will look "shuffled".

If you have to sort the cards and make the boards, as we do with hand records (and is almost unheard of outside NA) then obviously, it doesn't matter if they're presorted.

[Mbodell]

Logistically, does a table that is very late still need to sort the cards, or does that get passed on to the table behind them that is presumably ahead of them?

[ahh]

how many players sort their hands into suits and then rank the cards ? only the ones that don't know that many/some/ few or 1 of their opponents are likely to 'slot' i .e. watch carefully where the cards they play come from in their hand to work out suit patterns. So if I have to play under the proposed changes 1st thing I will do is to shuffle the hand before I look at it and then sort my hand randomly which is exactly what I do now. Big fuss over nothing .

[pran]

 mycroft, on 2013-September-23, 10:34, said:

So, before the latest revision of the Laws, it was a suggestion to shuffle, not a requirement, and many players in the UK by long-term habit would sort every hand. I had one or two of them playing here - frequently I'd get a call round 2 stating "my hand's sorted". I'd look two tables down, look back, and say "I'm not surprised. This might not be the last time."

This was getting less common in the UK (especially because of people who "don't sort them right" and others who read the resorting), and more officially discouraged; but the 1997 laws took that allowance out, and the UK has beat over their last hang-ons (or I haven't heard otherwise).

I think that going to "all sort" is going to be met at least as often in practise as "all shuffle", and the complaints are going to be just as good. Especially if a hand from a "never sorts" shows up sorted.

I wouldn't mind the law saying that you do one or the other, as long as you're consistent, and the cards don't come in play order. But that's not what the Law says, and going against it *now* is stupid. Especially as you're going to train club players, and they're going to go elsewhere to play tournaments (oh that's right, you're in "wouldn't drive 2 hours for a Regional" territory. Okay, "they're going to go to Nationals" :-) and have either to untrain, or face several L7 complaints.

There never was any suggestion (and certainly no requirement) in the laws before 2007 that the cards should be shuffled or arranged in any particular way when being returned to the board.

I do, however, remember reading some stories about players inspecting their cards without first sorting them in order to obtain some knowledge on the last play of that Board, and I suspect such stories to be the main reason for the new Law 7C?

[mycroft]

Got my years mixed up, I'm getting old.

[barmar]

 ahh, on 2013-September-23, 14:43, said:

how many players sort their hands into suits and then rank the cards ?

I'll bet at least 90%, probably more like 95%. And of the rest, I'll bet most of them sort into suits, but don't rank the cards.

Every time I've kibitzed a champion player at an NABC, or operate Vugraph, they sort their cards. It's possible they're doing it for the benefit of the kibitzers, but I doubt it.

[lamford]

 blackshoe, on 2013-September-21, 11:09, said:

I also think it's illegal, as it conflicts with Law 7C.

The new thing: sorting the cards into suits, not necessarily in numerical order, after playing the hand.

The usual interpretation of shuffle is "randomly shuffle", so I suppose you are right. It could be argued that the meaning "to move from one place to another, transfer or shift" is also a shuffle, and putting them into suits with the cards randomly within suits is still a shuffle.

[Trinidad]

 blackshoe, on 2013-September-22, 10:28, said:

Interesting that all the responders want to discuss the merits of the change, and not one of you addressed the legality of it.

If you post in "Changing Laws & Regulations" the proposed change is by definition illegal under the current laws. Otherwise a change wouldn't be necessary, would it?

In principle, I am sympathetic towards the idea of changing this rule. It saves time. However, there are practical problems, such as UI from players rearranging their hand that make it a bad idea.

Rik

[Vampyr]

 Trinidad, on 2013-September-24, 05:47, said:

In principle, I am sympathetic towards the idea of changing this rule. It saves time.

Interesting. Each player sorts her hand once; how does doing it after the hand save time compared with doing it before? In fact, sorting after would probably prompt/prolong a time-wasting post mortem.

[barmar]

 Trinidad, on 2013-September-24, 05:47, said:

If you post in "Changing Laws & Regulations" the proposed change is by definition illegal under the current laws. Otherwise a change wouldn't be necessary, would it?

If you're proposaing a change to the Laws, that's true (unless you're just proposing a clarification). But this thread is about a club regulation, and blackshoe was pointing out that we should be discussing whether the regulation is legal under the Laws.

[barmar]

 Vampyr, on 2013-September-24, 09:30, said:

Interesting. Each player sorts her hand once; how does doing it after the hand save time compared with doing it before? In fact, sorting after would probably prompt/prolong a time-wasting post mortem.

Sorting after takes less time than shuffling after and sorting before. We have one player in our club who shuffles so many times before putting his cards back in the board, it sometimes seems like he takes longer than sorting his cards.

It also kills a second bird with one stone: It prevents UI from the order of the cards received if the previous player forgot to shuffle.

[aguahombre]

 barmar, on 2013-September-24, 10:01, said:

If you're proposing a change to the Laws, that's true (unless you're just proposing a clarification). But this thread is about a club regulation, and blackshoe was pointing out that we should be discussing whether the regulation is legal under the Laws.

Letting "legal under the Laws" slide for the moment, it seems Dan Plato (shared by Ed) has given us our answer. To paraprase: yes it is illegal, Chapter 4 tells us clubs should follow the rules, and the ACBL won't be interfering in this situation if we don't follow them at the club level.

That leaves us with not much to discuss regarding legality, but a whole lot to discuss about the pros and cons of the issue itself. The players in areas where this is being considered or implemented should speak out loudly and clearly to their powers that be. The ACBL will not be getting involved.

[Vampyr]

 aguahombre, on 2013-September-24, 10:16, said:

The ACBL will not be getting involved.

The ACBL has to get involved to some extent if this regulation is implemented; it will have to withdraw membership from the clubs in question -- remove them from its website, and in general not support the clubs or allow them to participate in interclub activities, issue masterponts etc.

[barmar]

Does ACBL have a stated policy that they withdraw the sanctions of clubs that violate the Law?

Even if they do, it seems like the response the club received essentially said "We're going to look the other way" regarding this violation. So they're not enforcing that policy in this case. It's a self-made policy, they can choose to ignore it if they want. What's someone going to do, sue them over this? On what grounds?

[jeffford76]

 Vampyr, on 2013-September-24, 12:44, said:

The ACBL has to get involved to some extent if this regulation is implemented; it will have to withdraw membership from the clubs in question -- remove them from its website, and in general not support the clubs or allow them to participate in interclub activities, issue masterponts etc.

Really? Why do you think they have to do this? It seems clear from the quoted email they have no intention of doing anything. The ACBL Laws Commission when asked about the robot duplicate games already said that just because something doesn't follow the laws of bridge doesn't mean that the ACBL can't issue masterpoints for it.

[Vampyr]

I don't get why the WBF allow the ACBL to regard the Laws as optional.