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Touch Move Compromise - take pictures
Posted By: Henrik Bukkjaer In Response To: Touch Move Compromise - take pictures (Igor)
Date: Thursday, 5 December 2013, at 12:07 p.m.
Igor, I agree with you. Proper handling of dice and cup should be sufficient.
However, the same case could be made for clocks. If you ask me to play with a clock, I might reply: I haven't seen a study showing any evidence that clock play is faster than non-clock play. I'll play fast enough, so I'll refuse to play with the clock. However if our match progresses too slow, you can always ask me again to play with the clock.
In fact, clock procedures costs up to one 1 second per roll, since you don't have your dice in the cup, at the point of time where your clock starts running. Are you considering a double, it's not a delay (hence the 0 seconds), but if you just have an automatic roll, it will take you about a second extra, to grab the dice and put them in the cup.
The question then comes down to this: Why wait to use the bafflebox, until a player has made one or more rolls that was not OK according to the expected purpose of producing random rolls? And then having to argue about it at that point? Would you wait to put on a clock, until your opponent had already wasted a lot of time?
On top of that, as with clocks, there are some positive side effects of using the baffle box (if it's a well constructed box that is). Faster play and fewer cocked dice/overboard dice/re-rolls.
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Now, having made a lot of arguments for the box, I'll have to admit something: I never play my live tournament matches with a box. I only play bafflebox in speed gammon matches. I do own baffleboxes, and I wouldn't mind using them at anytime, but I simply don't bring them to regular matches, because I think I'm OK with dice and cups. And also because in Denmark there's not any tradition of using baffleboxes and a lot of people detest them. Objectively I would argue "there's not a single good reason NOT to use a bafflebox" - only the aesthetic one: Backgammon should be played with cups.
I was a strong proponent of that particular change in the DBgF rules about 13 years ago, where we opened up the rules for using baffleboxes to be a directors decision. Completely analogue with the clock rules, now the director can state on the tournament invite, if baffleboxes are mandatory, on request, or per player consensus. The reason is, that it might be ridiculous or overkill to insist using a box in a beginners flight of a small local tournament with an entry fee of $2, but on the other hand, in a final of a big tournament like the Nordic Open, if the tournament director, or a player, insist to use a box, no opponent should be allowed to refuse (when the stakes of the match is $10K+).
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