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New Rule - Dice Flat on Checkers
Posted By: Dorn Bishop In Response To: New Rule - Dice Flat on Checkers (christian munk-christensen)
Date: Thursday, 8 December 2016, at 6:02 a.m.
The rules were adopted by the USBGF Board. I was chair of the committee that drafted them, meaning that I drafted all of the rules (using the UK rules as a starting point) and revised them all as feedback was received first from other Rules Committee members (US Hall of Fame members Neil Kazaross, Kit Woolsey, Patrick Gibson, and prior rules-drafter/generally smart guy Chuck Bower) and then from several individual Board members (including Joe Russell, Richard Munitz, Bill Riles, and Karen Davis, among others). The drafting and peer-review process was by far the most thorough and comprehensive ever undertaken. It lasted approximately two years.
Based on the above, I find it astonishing that some complain that even more process, more input, more direct member participation should have taken place before the US rules were adopted. Most astounding is that many of those same people have been heralding the UK, Danish, and EU rules as supposed models that the US should have blindly followed. In terms of process, expert input, and group consideration, the US rules leave those other rule sets, and all previous rule sets, in the dust.
To your other questions, Christian: The dice on checker rule is no more out of step with other rule sets than the EU rule requiring that game clock delay time be reset whenever cocked dice are rolled (including dice landing on checkers). One might just as well say the EU rules are out of step with all other rules for requiring clock resets. Or that the UK and Danish rules are out of step with all other rules for requiring neither resetting of delay time nor allowing dice to land on checkers.
The alleged "downside" of globally inconsistent rules is therefore a red herring in the context of this rule and, frankly, in the context of hundreds of other differences between each rule sets. Indeed, every previous set of rules has been "globally inconsistent" with the last. Were it otherwise, no changes, no innovation, no accounting for changed circumstances could ever take place.
Now, I would agree that the US rules are far more "globally inconsistent" with other rule sets. That's a GOOD thing because the US rules are far more comprehensive, detailed, and up-to-date than any previous rule set. They take account of recent technological developments such as smart phones, bots, game clocks, recording devices, streaming, and the different considerations of online tournament play. And they provide guidance to tournament directors for ruling upon several specific factual situations that have occurred in tournaments since adoption of those other rule sets (most recently, in Chicago, in the Nordic Open, and pretty much in every match played by Ed O'Laughlin).
The EU time-reset rule and (in part) the US dice-on-checker rule are both intended to remedy the same problem: the relatively greater amount of lost time faced by the player forced to roll on the home board side of the table. The EU rule was considered and rejected by the US Board as unwieldy and unreliable to implement, and also because it unnecessarily slowed down the game (put another way, the dice on checker rule has the added benefit of moving the game along). Based on my observations to date (admittedly a very limited sampling), the amount of time saved is, on average, at least a couple of minutes every match. Over the course of multiple events held during a weekend tournament, the amount of saved time is quite significant. No problems implementing the "dice on checkers" rule have been reported at the two major tournaments where the US rules have been used.
The Danish rules were adopted before game clocks, and so the issue was never considered by the English lawyer who drafted those decades ago. The UK rules were adopted more recently but before game clocks had become nearly as prevalent. Again, there is no indication that Raj Jansari (who drafted the UK rules, using the Danish rules as a starting point, with hundreds of "global inconsistencies created in the process) had any notion of the "time imbalance" problem that the EU and US rules have both sought to address in the last year.
So the USBGF perceived a problem, just as the EU Federation did. Both federations have implemented a slightly different means to address that problem. Other methods of solving the problem were considered by the US (such as allowing a player to roll on the other side of the Board during bear offs). They were rejected, in part because they would be difficult to implement reliably in practice, and in part because they did not have the added benefit of speeding up the game.
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