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Director's response to Michel Lamote (LONG)

Posted By: rory
Date: Thursday, 9 June 2016, at 5:35 a.m.

I apologize for the length of this post but I believe some key points need to be clarified. I would like to fully explain my reasons for making the ruling and share my actions pre and post ruling.

Michel: By the way, I did ask for a ruling committee.

I concur, Michel did ask for a committee. I believe my only error in the whole affair was not having a committee in place for when this event began. This will NEVER happen again.

Michel: I asked the TD who was on it and he said: "Neil Kazaross, Carol Joy Cole and X" (I forgot). Not one of these persons was present at the time.

Michel is not remembering this accurately. The third person on the committee was Mochy. I told Michel that Mochy was the only member of the committee present and that Mochy agreed with my decision to restart the match. Michel then requested that Mochy come and tell him this directly. I approached Mochy and asked him to speak to Michel and let him know his opinion and how he would have voted as part of the committee. Mochy then went directly to Michel and told him exactly that.

Michel: Nor was the list of those persons posted at the TD's desk.

The rules will be present and posted for all to view in all tournaments I run going forward.

Michel: Since this ruling was made without the consultation of an official Ruling Committee and could easily have been different with another TD, it is in my view arbitrary at best.

I made my decision after consulting with at least 10 prominent members of the backgammon community including; Bill Riles (USBGF President), Dorn Bishop (USBGF board member currently directed with formalizing the USBGF Rules for tournament play), Mochy (#1 Giant), Phil Simborg (former USBGF Chair of the Rules and Ethics committee who has co-written a set of Backgammon Rules), Frank Talbot (former Giant ranked as high as #21), John O’Hagan (Giant #11) David Rockwell (National Othello Tournament Director), David Todd, and Ben Friesen.

Before I called these people to gather I had a strong feeling of how and why I should rule. I knew there would be controversy either way and felt getting an idea of where the community stood was probably a good idea. All the players agreed that the correct ruling would be to restart the match at that point where the clock timed out with the exception of one person who abstained. After I made the decision I also spoke with both Bill Davis and Carol Joy Cole who both thought it was a “no-brainer”.

Michel: Moreover, since the ruling appears to be based on a multi-interpretable set of brittle rules, I cannot help but feeling robbed. If this had happened at the Nordic, for instance, the TD would have called together a pre-appointed Ruling Committee and I could have more easily accepted the verdict and, when given, the admonishment. As it is, I am incapable of shedding the feeling that I have fallen victim to some form of lynch law.

I made it perfectly clear to Michel that I was not judging him as a person or questioning his ethics. I stated to him that I in my opinion he simply made a poor decision and good people make bad decisions all the time. A person should not be condemned for any single poor choice they make in life.

Michel then replied that he believed this was a partisan ruling. He told me I was ruling against him because he was a foreigner and his opponent was American. As you can imagine I found this quite insulting. I responded that I didn’t care what race, sex, sexual orientation, or nationality he or his opponent were. This decision was made based on only the facts and circumstances of what transpired.

I explained that I was Jewish and my wife is Christian. Further, we choose to send our daughter to a school run by the Turkish American Society of Chicago of which most members are Muslim. My little Christian blonde girl is the minority in a school full of diversity. Turkey, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Syria, Persia, India, China, Japan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia are many of the places where people have originated from that go to school with my daughter. I have learned much about their cultures and religions by participating in and organizing school events. I have been to their homes for dinner and they have been to mine for the same. With much disgust at Michel’s insult I told him he was sadly mistaken if he thought my ruling was in anyway partisan. Like my daughter’s school our game is global and partisan rulings have no place here.

My original post here on BGO was drafted by both Michel and myself. He was worried about being lambasted on BGO by “all the Americans”. I sat down with Michel to draft the post as I did not want to the message of what transpired to condemn him in anyway. Leaving the post with a hook at the end was his idea.

One of the points Michel made time and time again is that no director in Europe would ever have ruled this way. This made me want to reach out to my friends across the pond.

At 10:44 PM I saw Mislav Kovačić on Facebook. I chatted with him on and off for 45 minutes. His opinion was that the match ended and should not have been restarted. When I asked him on a scale of 1-10 how bad was my ruling? He replied 5 because he didn’t think it was bad he just disagreed.

At 1:30 AM when I got home I messaged Leonardo Jerković on Facebook. In his opinion Steve’s moves were not illegal just because the clock was not hit at the end of each turn. So he would not have restarted the match.

I posed the same question to Steen Grønbech, who sent me a link to the EUBGF rules. He pointed to Section 4.3 iv…

MISTAKE AS TO CLOCK ACTIVATION - Where a player notices (or in the opinion of the Tournament Director it is obvious that he has or should have noticed) that his opponent has made a mistake such that his opponent’s time is activated without him being aware of it then the player is under a duty to inform his opponent of the fact. Failure to do so may result in addition back of the time so lost, a warning to such player, penalty points against such player, loss of the game by such player, loss of the match by such player or disqualification from the Tournament of such player. In exceptional circumstances the player involved may be temporarily or permanently barred from future Tournaments.

Steen’s only question was whether the match should be restarted or should the infracting player be disqualified. In the end he agreed with my ruling.

As I was chatting with Steen I simultaneously I posed the same question to Rick Janowski and though we didn’t chat back and forth he did message me back a couple hours later stating “he would have voted for a concession of the game and or match depending on whether this was done from ignorance or bad sportsmanship.”

I had a third chat going on with Chiva Tafazzoli which lasted approximately 45 minutes on FB. He shared the same opinion as Mislav. Though he didn’t waver his opinion seemed to soften when I pointed to the EUBGF Rules.

At 2:10 AM I also messaged Jeremy Bagai and we chatted for about 20 minutes on FB. He dislikes legal moves but under the circumstance that we were playing legal moves he liked my ruling.

So I went to bed around 2:45 AM and got up at 7:30 AM to prepare breakfast and begin Day 2 of a 5-day tournament. I wish I had gotten more sleep!!!

When I arrived at the hotel the next morning Michel, Phil, and a few others were in the lobby. Michel was set to leave and Phil was trying to talk him out of it. I told Michel about all me FB chats and he was shocked to learn of this EUBGF rule. However he still chose to leave.

With all that I have stated here I still just feel like maybe I did something wrong. I had a player withdraw from my tournament after spending thousands of dollars and traveling all the way from Europe. I really do feel badly about the whole situation. But what makes me feel better is knowing that if I had done nothing at all I definitely would have done something wrong. The difference is simply feeling versus knowing.

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