[pescetom]

For the second time in two years I was thrown up against the same pair: an elderly player and her charming grand-daughter, who explained that grandmother had severe sight problems and needed to use a card holder plus a strong back light to see her cards. Which should be fine (no question that at lower levels of competition, inclusion has priority over perfection of the competitive result). But her card holder (yet again) has not one, but four rows, and she insistently and very visibily starts to sort her hand into four rows.
I call the TD who explains the potential problem and asks her gently to place her cards in one row, she does so but as soon as he is gone starts to reorder them in four rows.
I gave up because my partner (with short memory) seemed to think they must be in good faith (or it was too embarassing to demand that the Laws be enforced).

Your thoughts?

As I pointed out to them later, there are elegant single-row curved card holders of 33cm (but there was no problem in holding 13 cards in one row of her holder anyway, as she reluctantly demonstrated when the TD insisted. She could also place the affair on her knees below table level if necessary).

[jillybean]

If this was a club game, I'd let it go but you did mention TD

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2025-July-20, 18:30, said:

If this was a club game, I'd let it go but you did mention TD

It was a national simultaneous tournament, an inter-club game with in this case 20 tables.
So (fortunately) nothing more than prestige and masterpoints at stake, but not appropriate for a circus act like this either.

If I was the TD, I would instruct them to place the cards in one line and politely suggest that in future they add a screen in front of the card holder or use a tray below table height instead.

[mycroft]

I think a simple card, A5 or so size, taped to the back of the card holder will assist. I have seen several similar used by people who don't want the opponents clocking their plays.

I would have suggested the traditional DM's screen, but the others do need to see the die rolls bids and plays.

There is, of course, the option you claimed you (would) take the last time - play with double dummy distribution knowledge yourself, and do it better than the daughter.

[HardVector]

I had a similar situation occur when I was starting out. On the hand in question, a pair bid to 3c in a contested auction. The pair in question was a husband/wife pair in which the wife was using a card holder. The husband drove the auction to 3c despite holding just three clubs and his wife passing throughout the auction. It turned out that his partner (the wife), held a 6 card club suit.

They had the misfortune to perpetrate this upon the Unit President who brought this hand to the disciplinary committee of the Unit. The blatant abuse of UI resulted in the pair being barred from any game in the Unit for a one year period. I personally thought this a fair ruling.

The summary of this is, if the partner of the card holder takes advantage of the UI then they are cheaters. If they don't, then they are quality people who should be embraced.

[Huibertus]

I've played against these single-row curved card holders of 33cm. The person using it always left gaps between the suits.

It's annoying yes, but please let things like this go, they're probably evening out the advantage they sometimes have by you having the advantage seeing the same and their mistakes caused by poor sight on other occasions anyway.

[jillybean]

There are so many other methods people use to transmit UI. I'm happy to let this one go.
"grandmother had severe sight problems and needed to use a card holder plus a strong back light to see her cards"

[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2025-July-21, 18:21, said:

I think a simple card, A5 or so size, taped to the back of the card holder will assist. I have seen several similar used by people who don't want the opponents clocking their plays.

Yes, that would already do the trick, although maybe not very practical for the player who might have problems reaching over it and seeing over it (this was an unusually large card holder, in all dimensions).
I think the ideal would be a tray about 40cm x 15cm that clips to the table edge and sits about 15cm lower, with some downwards pointing leds to illuminate the cards and help distinguish suit colours.