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BGonline.org Forums
USBGF Rules - permitting dice to land on checkers is a bad rule
Posted By: willballard In Response To: USBGF Rules - permitting dice to land on checkers is a bad rule (Ken Larsen)
Date: Tuesday, 11 October 2016, at 3:28 a.m.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of its merits, the recent adoption of the on-checker rule is going to cause confusion and bad feelings. Will TD’s announce the new rule before each division begins play (assuming they concur with the rule)? If not, suppose player A rolls, a die lands on top of a checker, and player A picks up both dice to re-roll. The opposing player B points out that this is a rule violation, but player A is unaware of or adamantly opposed to the rule change, so the TD is called over and presumably rules in favor of player B, asking that the dice be replaced as they had been rolled. So player A replaces the dice (on a checker? on the board?) as, say, 44, whereupon player B says no, they were 54. After all, how close attention would the second die have received? So the TD is called over again, and presumably rules in favor of player B, since player A committed the infraction. Whatever the TD decides, bad feelings will have been created (at which point the TD is called over to another table for the same reason).
In jurisprudence there’s the concept of stare decisis, i.e., let previous decisions stand without an overwhelming reason to overrule or revise them.
I take no position on whether or not the on-checker rule is intrinsically wise. I do suggest that attempting to change it at this point is ill-advised.
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