You may remember this question about order of operations.
I played this player again last night, and enforced rules on two types of transgressions he routinely made: (1) hitting the clock before completing his move and (2) picking up the dice before I hit my clock.
Both of these he did a few times -- he hit the clock prematurely four times, but it was clear he was making an effort to repair a bad habit. On each premature clock hit, I immediately hit the clock back, and made him put his hit checker on the bar before hitting the clock. On the premature pickup, he seemed to have more trouble with it, including expressing mild incredulity that I wanted to enforce the rule even when I had a forced move. New times... I'm now going all out to enforce the premature dice pickup rule in all circumstances.
Next question... am I a hypocrite? I was faced with the following play:
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| XGID=-EaCBBB--------------abdg-:1:-1:1:11:0:1:0:5:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 11 | |||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.19.211.pre-release
I played 3/2*/0 1/0, by doing the following, in order:
- I moved the checker on the 3 point directly to the bearoff tray, without tapping on the checker to be hit.
- I moved the checker on the 1 point directly to the bearoff tray.
- I moved my opponents' blot to the bar.
- Finally, I hit the clock.
Would you describe this as:
- Against the rules, and I'm a hypocrite
- Legal, but bad practice
- Legal, but bad practice only in a very technical way as the USBGF Ruling Guide defines bad practice, any backgammon player would do this and nobody should care.
- Legal and acceptable practice
- Something else?
My opponent did not call me a hypocrite. He did say that my actions were illegal, but did not call for the director nor seek any redress.
JLee