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Proposed 2019 USBGF Rules. Public comment thru July 18. Pictures, Headphones.
Posted By: Rich Munitz
Date: Monday, 18 June 2018, at 7:18 p.m.
The USBGF Rules Committee seeks public comment on a draft revision of the USBGF Tournament Rules, intended to take effect in 2019. This 30-day public comment period ends on July 18. You may comment on this thread, which will be regularly monitored, or you may email comments to rules@usbgf.org.
The proposed 2019 Rules may be viewed here:
http://usbgf.org/docs/rules2019_proposed_public_comment.pdf
You may also download a marked-up MS Word document showing all edits made relative to the 2018 Rules. You will see highlighted text in the marked-up version that indicates the presence of comments to explain the rationale for each proposed change. If you hover your mouse over the highlighted text, the comments should pop up. That document may be found here:
http://usbgf.org/docs/rules2019_proposed_public_comment_markup.docx
The USBGF Tournament Rules have been in universal use for only 5 months, so it is too early to consider wholesale rule changes. Therefore, this year’s review has very limited scope. Specifically, there are only two kinds of changes being considered:
1) Clarifications. These are changes in text that do not change the intent of the rules. The goal is simply to clarify existing intent, remove ambiguity, or to state something explicitly that was previously stated only in the Ruling Guide, or that should have been otherwise generally understood to be true.
2) Fixes due to misunderstandings. These are changes to rules that were written as-is into the 2018 Rules last year only because a misunderstanding took place. Had that misunderstanding not occurred at that time, the rule would not have been written as it was. These are actual changes to intent.
All comments and suggestions for changes are welcome, but any that fall outside of the narrow scope defined above will be added to the growing list of notes for consideration in next year’s Rules review.
There are only two proposed rule changes that fall into category 2)
1) Picture taking:
Elimination of the rule that bans picture taking in Clocks Preferred events when players agree not to use a clock. Concern about this rule was raised during review by the Tournament Directors Advisory Committee. However, while that concern was intended as an objection, it was misinterpreted as a request for clarification. It was not until after the Rules were ratified by referendum that this misunderstanding became clear. This rule would not have made it into the final 2018 Rules had this misunderstanding not taken place.
2) Headphones:
Eliminate the right of a player and the Director to unconditionally veto the use of headphones by their opponent.
Proposed: “Listening devices for music or noise cancelling are allowed, subject to Director review.”
Under the proposed change, headphone use can still be challenged, and is subject to Director review, but the Director must be convinced that the circumstances of the particular case warrant making an exception to the rule generally allowing headphone use, and that disallowing headphone use is the narrowest reasonable remedy to address the concern. It had always been the intent since the original 2016 USBGF rule set to mirror the UKBGF (now EUBGF) rule regarding headphone use. Unfortunately, as evidenced by our misunderstanding, the rule we mirrored was unclear and ambiguous:
“While a match is in progress, a player is permitted to use headphones if the opponent accepts this, such acceptance not to be unreasonably withheld. The Tournament Director may revoke such acceptance at any time.”
This rule appeared to require that headphone use be accepted by the other player, giving any player raising a “reasonable” objection the ability to ban headphone use, and complete power to ban headphones to the Director. What is a reasonable objection? Almost any objection stated could be reasonable, we believed (nobody would give their reason as “I want to rattle my opponent”); the rule effectively appearing to mean that headphones could be used as long as the other player didn’t object. So we clarified this in our language, knowing that under the USBGF Rules, the Director always retains the power to make exceptions based upon the particular circumstances and could overrule an objection to headphone use if in their judgment the particular circumstances justified making such an exception. Unfortunately, this interpretation of the UK rule that seemed obvious to us at the time turned out to be almost the opposite of its actual intent, as we discovered earlier this year during some online discussions in the fallout after Ben Friesen was banned from using headphones in the Monenegro finals. The actual intent was that a player not wanting their opponent to use headphones would have to appeal to the Director and convince them to disallow their use. Well, a player can always appeal to the Director if they believe the particular circumstance justifies making an exception, so why add this confusion to the rule? This proposed rule change rectifies the misunderstanding in interpretation and conforms with the EU rule as we had always intended.
It is also worth mentioning that we have been listening intently to feedback on this topic from the backgammon community. While many people don’t like headphone use in the game, almost nobody seems passionate about that dislike to the point of wanting to ban their opponents from using them. Meanwhile, headphone users are extremely passionate about not being banned from using them. The issue of potential cheating with headphones has been discussed at length, and it is clear that while everyone acknowledges that cheating can occur, there appears to be no serious demand from the community at this time that the chance of cheating in backgammon warrants serious steps like the ban of electronic devices. If and when concern over cheating with headphones or other electronic devices rises to the point that the backgammon community demands action in the form of rule changes, we will revisit this rule.
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