[Echognome]

Stefanie - I think you are being a bit unfair. Businesses have force majeure clauses in contracts all the time. Who determines whether that clause is applicable in a particular situation? If the parties cannot resolve it amongst themselves, they litigate.

TD's have to make judgment rulings all the time. I think it no less fair to have a TD make a judgment ruling with respect to whether something was an "act of God" or not. When I was a Lecturer and had to decide whether a student's late assignment was 'excusable' or 'inexcusable', I typically had to just make a judgment call. Of course a rule such that no late assignments were ever accepted would obviate any need to make such a judgment. However, I felt that it was "fairer" to allow for judgment than to simply deny all late assignments.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable debate to discuss whether force majeure clauses should be in the regulations. Some people will feel one way or another about it. But just because it can be difficult to make a determination should not imply that we should not try. There is nothing inherently unfair about having to make a judgment call. If there was, then there would need to be changes to many of the existing laws in bridge.

[pran]

Vampyr, on 2011-February-16, 15:40, said:

OK, then...

1. The nurse was at the premises on time and ready to play.
2. She was carrying out her ministrations under the instructions (or at least with the blessing) of the tournament directors.
3. The nurse situation is not what this thread is about.
4. Please stop using it as a distraction.



OK, well I gave you specific examples, and can give any number of further ones. Which ones "count" and which don't?



So if your nurse had been delayed at work because she had to care for a heart attack victim there, she would have been permitted to arrive late without her scores being affected?

Applying the regulations is easy and correct. It avoids ambiguity and subjectivity and the resentment they may cause.

But your suggestion in an earlier post that a team delayed through "force majeure" receive A+ for the boards they couldn't play is wonderful and should at least receive style points.

So long as you absolutely refuse to consider force majeure as an element for the Director to consider I have little more to say.

I don't know if you have force majeure clauses included in your regulations where procedural penalties are specified. If not, I understand your position, but I consider such regulations extremely unfair to a contestant that has been the victim of force majeure.

Whether or not you have force majeure clauses included I just do not understand how you can treat a contestant "in any way at fault" when he has been such victim. Ave-, Ave or Ave+ is a matter of law, not of regulation and the deciding criteria is whether the contestant is directly, partly or in no way at fault.

[Vampyr]

pran, on 2011-February-17, 02:05, said:

So long as you absolutely refuse to consider force majeure as an element for the Director to consider I have little more to say.

Don't do it for my benefit. Why not decide on the various cases I mentioned for the benefit of those who agree with you? A line has to be drawn somewhere. And this is the problem, as far as I am concerned -- someone is going to be on the wrong side of the line.

[Vampyr]

Echognome, on 2011-February-16, 16:20, said:

Stefanie - I think you are being a bit unfair. Businesses have force majeure clauses in contracts all the time. Who determines whether that clause is applicable in a particular situation? If the parties cannot resolve it amongst themselves, they litigate.

... When I was a Lecturer and had to decide whether a student's late assignment was 'excusable' or 'inexcusable', I typically had to just make a judgment call. Of course a rule such that no late assignments were ever accepted would obviate any need to make such a judgment. However, I felt that it was "fairer" to allow for judgment than to simply deny all late assignments.

I understand what you are saying, but we are talking about a game. We are also talking about a situation where people who are completely unrelated are inconvenienced. Also the whole event might be buggered up. Suppose the OP event involved some sort of selection -- for representation of the county/region/country, or a regional/national final, etc.

Go ahead and be as merciful as you like to the delayed team -- say, give them average for all the boards they missed. But their opponents cannot be given less than A+. Particularly if the late team is a strong one, the entire field will have their chances of selection reduced. If the unoffending team is a strong one, the averages that the late team received may well affect others. I'm not saying that there are easy solutions to problems like this. I'm just illustrating the kind of impact that one late team can have, even when the late team is clearly at fault for their own tardiness.

I'm trying to be fair, really -- I don't think that it is unfair for the organisers of a game to be very rigid about fulfillment of the basic conditions of contest.

[bluejak]

I suppose the question to ask Matt to consider is this:

• Suppose you are marking the papers as in the example you gave, and you have deadlines. But suppose as well that in your class you give out 3 As, always three, to the three with top marks. Now when you allow someone to put in a paper late it might mean he gets an A and someone misses out. How kind are you now to someone with a late paper?

There will always come a time when a PP or the type of Average decides an event. A lady of Devon did not speak to me, merely growled when she saw me, for about four years after I gave her an Average Minus in a Ladies Pairs in a National Congress in London. Asking the other TDs, four would have given her Average, four Average Minus. If she gets Average she wins the event, but Average Minus cost her the event.

Four years later she hammered us in the Tollemache, an inter-County Team of Eight, mainly because she and her partner had a very big set against me and my partner. We were a much more fancied team than hers. After that she forgave me!

[Vampyr]

bluejak, on 2011-February-17, 08:06, said:

• Suppose you are marking the papers as in the example you gave, and you have deadlines. But suppose as well that in your class you give out 3 As, always three, to the three with top marks. Now when you allow someone to put in a paper late it might mean he gets an A and someone misses out. How kind are you now to someone with a late paper?

But isn't this much easier, David? Accept the late paper with the proviso that it is not eligible for an A.

[bluejak]

And then someone who had to save three lives by driving dying people to hospital does not get an A?

[Echognome]

I will only add that "fair" does not equal "easy to adjudicate".

[FrancesHinden]

pran, on 2011-February-15, 17:40, said:

My point is that the team failing to show up in time because of force majeure cannot be blamed for not showing up in time. Therefore they should (as far as possible) be treated the same way as any other contestant in no way at fault for an irregularity. If this results in Ave+ being awarded to both contestants in a match then so be it. Neither side is in any way at fault.

Say that you have a multisession (series) competition over multiple weekends and one team arrives one hour late at one session because of a two hour train delay. Do you blame them for not planning to arrive at the event two hours instead of one hour before the scheduled start of the session? Do you find it fair to apply the prescribed penalty for being one hour late?

Generally we never penalize contestants for irregularities they (indirectly) cause because of events completely out of their control ("force majeure").

Yes, I do. I don't think a 'two hour train delay' is much of an excuse. "Force majeure" is usually defined as an "unavoidable catastrophe". Maybe the Swiss would put a train delay in that category, but I doubt anyone else would.

The English Premier League takes place over three weekends (two Sat-Sun, one Fri-Sun) in 3 different locations. Some teams choose to travel to the venue on Saturday morning. My team prefers not to risk traffic/train problems and travels on Friday evening, incurring the cost of an additional night in a hotel as a consequence. If our opponents were late because of train or traffic delays and the TD said "oh no problem, you couldn't help it, forget the regulations that specify penalties for late arrival and I'll just give A+ to both teams for all the boards missed" then it's just saying that the regulations are there to be ignored. In which case we'll ignore all the others as well.

[Chris L]

FrancesHinden, on 2011-February-20, 05:32, said:

Yes, I do. I don't think a 'two hour train delay' is much of an excuse. "Force majeure" is usually defined as an "unavoidable catastrophe". Maybe the Swiss would put a train delay in that category, but I doubt anyone else would.

The English Premier League takes place over three weekends (two Sat-Sun, one Fri-Sun) in 3 different locations. Some teams choose to travel to the venue on Saturday morning. My team prefers not to risk traffic/train problems and travels on Friday evening, incurring the cost of an additional night in a hotel as a consequence. If our opponents were late because of train or traffic delays and the TD said "oh no problem, you couldn't help it, forget the regulations that specify penalties for late arrival and I'll just give A+ to both teams for all the boards missed" then it's just saying that the regulations are there to be ignored. In which case we'll ignore all the others as well.

In EBU KO competitions, there are rules governing late arrival. If a team is more than 45 mins late, without notifying the oppo (or 90 mins having notified the oppo) they forfeit the match. Once a team is more than 30 mins late (notified or not), the match is reduced in length; by 2 boards for the first 30 mins and then by 2 more boards for each successive period of 15 mins, with the non offending side receiving 3 IMPs for each board withdrawn. There are no exceptions for "force majeure".

I have experienced these regulations in action twice. A few years ago my team was due to play Gordon TD's team in a Crockford's Plate match at the YC in London on a Saturday afternoon. We set off in good time to get to the venue but were delayed on the M11 by an horrendous traffic jam caused by a van which caught fire on the other carriageway. We had no means of escape. Had the authorities been more on the ball, they could have turned on the warning signs on the motorway at the point we joined it (the incident had occurred well over an hour earlier) and we could have reached the venue in plenty of time by another route. We rang Gordon on a mobile, initially just to say we were going to be late. When it became clear that we would be well over 90 minutes late, we rang to concede. Gordon very sportingly offered to re-arrange the match but we were already very close to the deadline for playing it and at least one of my team couldn't make any of the alternatives offered. The concession stood; we eventually escaped after about 5 hours.

A year or so later we had a NICKO match at our home venue. The opponents had to come 30 miles or so from Essex. They rang shortly before the match to say that their car had broken down. The AA had been called but they didn't know how long they would be. We told them to keep us posted and we would be in touch. We then had a team talk and decided (one of my team called it "thinking outside the box") that we would go to their house and play an 18 board match there with an 18 IMP start (by now it was clear that we would eventually become entitled to claim the match) which also saved them the problem of two of them being stranded with a broken down car at our venue. The oppo were duly grateful for this gesture on our part and showed their gratitude in the usual way by overcoming their 18 IMP handicap to beat us, even though we were, on paper, much the stronger team.

[Trinidad]

FrancesHinden, on 2011-February-20, 05:32, said:

Yes, I do. I don't think a 'two hour train delay' is much of an excuse. "Force majeure" is usually defined as an "unavoidable catastrophe". Maybe the Swiss would put a train delay in that category, but I doubt anyone else would.

The English Premier League takes place over three weekends (two Sat-Sun, one Fri-Sun) in 3 different locations. Some teams choose to travel to the venue on Saturday morning. My team prefers not to risk traffic/train problems and travels on Friday evening, incurring the cost of an additional night in a hotel as a consequence. If our opponents were late because of train or traffic delays and the TD said "oh no problem, you couldn't help it, forget the regulations that specify penalties for late arrival and I'll just give A+ to both teams for all the boards missed" then it's just saying that the regulations are there to be ignored. In which case we'll ignore all the others as well.

All these things are relative.

So, in the UK, you are more or less expected to book a hotel and stay the night before. Fine. In other places this idea may be quite different.

The Netherlands is a small country with a very high population density. The national competitions are played in Utrecht, right in the middle. This city is easy to reach by car or by train during the weekends (when the competitions are played). My guess would be that it takes most teams less than an hour to get there. Nobody would leave the day before to get to a tournament. In fact, if the tournament takes place on Saturday and Sunday, 95% of the players return home on Saturday evening to enjoy dinner at home. Only teams from the far North East spend the night in a hotel.

The Dutch bridge league (NBB) has rules for being late. The basic rule is that they assume that you will leave at such a point in time that you will be able to overcome problems that could be expected. Trains in The Netherlands are running every 15 minutes and are fairly prompt. If you miss a train because another was delayed that will cost you 15 minutes. Maybe you will get a flat tyre. That will cost you 15-30 minutes, depending on how handy you are. These are things that you should account for. As a result, normally everybody is showing up around 45 minutes before the start of play.

One day this winter, all teams that were not from Utrecht were late. There was a power outage near the railroad station in Utrecht and trains were stranded. Power outages like that are very rare in The Netherlands. The league's rules are simple: The TD has to apply the prescribed penalties. The teams may appeal to a higher authority. (Two of them did, they won and the higher authority advised the NBB the remove all the imposed penalties, which obviously happened.)

It's fine with me if that appeal wouldn't have had a chance in the UK. I merely want to illustrate that the way things are done in the UK is not universal. I am sure that the Norwegian Bridge League is not going to hold it against the players if planes are stuck in Larvik for a week and the players can't make it to Oslo.

There is one thing that surprises me in this UK philosophy though: It seems like you expect players to be able to plan sufficient time around a tournament, so that it is possible to play there. How is it than possible that the fact that one player was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong and the other was supposed to drive him to the airport was used as an argument why they couldn't attend an appeal?

If the English culture with respect to reserving time for the tournament really is that strict, I would not have mercy with players who cannot spend the extra half hour that an appeal might take. I would have appealed and if they didn't show up: tough luck, the form will say that they weren't present at the hearing.

Rik

[bluejak]

It is not that strict. If you read the posts carefully you will find that all that has been said is that a couple of tournaments have specific rules, not that the majority do.

There is no absolute requirement to attend appeals, and ACs will generally listen to appeals without the appellants when an adequate reason is given. Furthermore, players do not have to appeal if they do not want to, despite Paul's assertion in another thread that they do. It does not matter what the reason is, for example finding it impractical to attend.

At an EBU event I expect most players would expect to attend an appeal at the end of a tournament about one time in fifty or a hundred: I do not think it unreasonable to fail to allow for attending one.

[FrancesHinden]

Trinidad, on 2011-February-20, 14:10, said:

All these things are relative.

So, in the UK, you are more or less expected to book a hotel and stay the night before. Fine. In other places this idea may be quite different.

The Netherlands is a small country with a very high population density. The national competitions are played in Utrecht, right in the middle. This city is easy to reach by car or by train during the weekends (when the competitions are played). My guess would be that it takes most teams less than an hour to get there. Nobody would leave the day before to get to a tournament. In fact, if the tournament takes place on Saturday and Sunday, 95% of the players return home on Saturday evening to enjoy dinner at home. Only teams from the far North East spend the night in a hotel.

The Dutch bridge league (NBB) has rules for being late. The basic rule is that they assume that you will leave at such a point in time that you will be able to overcome problems that could be expected. Trains in The Netherlands are running every 15 minutes and are fairly prompt. If you miss a train because another was delayed that will cost you 15 minutes. Maybe you will get a flat tyre. That will cost you 15-30 minutes, depending on how handy you are. These are things that you should account for. As a result, normally everybody is showing up around 45 minutes before the start of play.

One day this winter, all teams that were not from Utrecht were late. There was a power outage near the railroad station in Utrecht and trains were stranded. Power outages like that are very rare in The Netherlands. The league's rules are simple: The TD has to apply the prescribed penalties. The teams may appeal to a higher authority. (Two of them did, they won and the higher authority advised the NBB the remove all the imposed penalties, which obviously happened.)

It's fine with me if that appeal wouldn't have had a chance in the UK. I merely want to illustrate that the way things are done in the UK is not universal. I am sure that the Norwegian Bridge League is not going to hold it against the players if planes are stuck in Larvik for a week and the players can't make it to Oslo.

Many teams do travel on the day. They know if there is a delay they will be fined imps as a consequence, it's their decision.

I think you have missed my point. Sven gave as an example of 'force majeure' a two hour train dealy.
I am objecting to the following circumstances:

Team 1 are aware of the penalties for late arrival and allow plenty of time, perhaps incurring extra costs and certainly 'wasting' time as a consequence.
Team 2 allow less time, and are caught up by an unexpected delay such as an accident shutting the motorway. They are late.

The TD says 'oh that was force majeure, never mind, I'm not applying the late arrival penalties'.

Team 1 now have to play with a later start/later finish/fewer boards than they paid for, in spite of the fact that they made extra efforts to be on time. Is it a surprise that they are unhappy?

Quote

There is one thing that surprises me in this UK philosophy though: It seems like you expect players to be able to plan sufficient time around a tournament, so that it is possible to play there. How is it than possible that the fact that one player was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong and the other was supposed to drive him to the airport was used as an argument why they couldn't attend an appeal?

If the English culture with respect to reserving time for the tournament really is that strict, I would not have mercy with players who cannot spend the extra half hour that an appeal might take. I would have appealed and if they didn't show up: tough luck, the form will say that they weren't present at the hearing.

Rik

For this particular tournament the team involved sent a team of 5 pairs, so one pair was always sitting out. This particular pair were sitting out the last match. No-one suggested that their need to leave early meant that there could not be an appeal - as you say, it would just have been tough luck. However, it was pointed out in the BBO thread for information in that the various unanswered questions about their methods would not have been answered if there was an appeal.

[cherdano]

So to sum up the discussion: in NL, bigger train delays are a "force majeure", whereas in the UK, it's a regularly occurring contingency that teams have to take into account?

[bluejak]

No.

[Vampyr]

bluejak, on 2011-February-23, 08:47, said:

No.

David, I think cherdano was making a joke.

The question here is whether it is better to have two categories for tournament participants: "on time" and "not on time" or to add an additional category "not on time due to force majeure". It seems to Frances and to many others that the first option is more acceptable.

There may be exceptions when it is a matter of life and death. Transport delays do not fall into this category.

[bluejak]

FrancesHinden, on 2011-February-23, 04:54, said:

For this particular tournament the team involved sent a team of 5 pairs, so one pair was always sitting out. This particular pair were sitting out the last match. No-one suggested that their need to leave early meant that there could not be an appeal - as you say, it would just have been tough luck. However, it was pointed out in the BBO thread for information in that the various unanswered questions about their methods would not have been answered if there was an appeal.

If a pair had to leave, and their methods were likely to be relevant in an appeal, perhaps they could have briefed their captain.

The method of appeals is a pain for a lot of people, and many people have not appealed over they ears because of the time and trouble involved. It is reasonable when going to a tournament that lasts from [say] 1200 to 1900 to expect to arrive at 1115 or so and get away at 1930. In exceptional circumstances, an appeal has been known to put an hour's delay into the departure time.

Whether the game should have appeals is a matter we could discuss under 'Changing Laws & Regulations', but for the remaining three forums here perhaps we should accept:

• appeals are part of the game
  
• reasons for not appealing or not attending appeals may involve practicality

[dburn]

bluejak, on 2011-February-23, 08:56, said:

The method of appeals is a pain for a lot of people, and many people have not appealed over they ears

Oh yes they have. And over the rest of they heads, as well.

[Trinidad]

cherdano, on 2011-February-23, 05:57, said:

So to sum up the discussion: in NL, bigger train delays are a "force majeure", whereas in the UK, it's a regularly occurring contingency that teams have to take into account?

It seems to be like that.

I am just wondering what would happen in the case of, let's say, a job interview in the two countries. Would your prospective employer be willing to schedule a new interview if you would be calling to say: "Sorry. I can't make it. I am stuck in a train that was scheduled to arrive one hour early, but it seems like it is going to be three hours late."?

In The Netherlands, such an occurance is rare, easy to verify and regarded as force majeure. "You have done everything that could reasonably be expected of you to be there on time." In the UK this seems to be different.

Rik

[bluejak]

We are not talking of someone doing everything he possibly can to avoid delays: see Frances' post about going the previous night. We are talking of doing a certain amount, and when that amount is not enough calling it force majeure. You then compare different train schedules with different frequencies and different distances and different reliabilities.

Suppose someone in the Netherlands decided that 90 minutes was enough because you never get train delays that much. Someone then falls in front of a train and eventually you arrive at the venue 45 minutes late for the first match.

Your opponents for that match have come from the same city but they allowed a couple of hours. So they were on time and waiting. Instead of giving them 6 Average Plus scores, you just shorten the match by 6 boards - let us say halving its length. Thus the team who allowed 2 hours lose 6 boards of play and get no redress. Do they get a partial refund? No, I expect not.

Sure, despite a lack of regulation, in most events in England the TD would make his mind up, and if he really believes that the delay was out of the contestants' hands he would be sympathetic. At such a time, other contestants would normally be sympathetic too. But just arriving late for a train delay does not sound to me like force majeure unless the people have really left adequate time for delays. It seems it is too easy in the Netherlands to get away with upsetting your opponents by claiming force majeure.

In general, I believe that the question that really matters is: Assuming your opponents are reasonable people, do they think you should be penalised? If they do, then I think they should.