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BGonline.org Forums
Saturday morning speech in Pittsburgh
Posted By: Phil Simborg In Response To: Saturday morning speech in Pittsburgh (Michael Petch)
Date: Sunday, 28 February 2010, at 4:08 a.m.
It doesn't matter whether Ray was right or wrong about the situation in LA. It is simply in very poor form to air this dirty laundry in public; it was a horrible introduction into tournament backgammon for people in the room new to the game; is was a rude and disgusting waste of everyone's time; it was terribly unfair to the people who were being accused of lying and cheating to be talked about in public (and many of knew exactly who Ray was talking about) without their having the opportunity to defend themselves; Ray was NOT given the podium for this purpose and he abused his right to make an acceptance speech; it was rude to the tournament organizers and Bill Davis given their efforts to organize an exciting and inspiring awards ceremony; and lastly, it was not the kind of thing that is good for the game of backgammon (to hear the No. 1 player in the game bitch about an old ruling he didn't like and some people who's actions he didn't like).
If it was my tournament, or if I was Bill Davis, I would have stopped him...but I do give them credit for trying, and NOBODY DREAMED he would drone on as long as he did.
On the other side of the coin, the game currently has no venue for someone like Ray, who believes he was cheated or at least treated unfairly, to appeal, so he felt he needed to take his complaints public. In the future, the USBGF Rules and Ethics Committee will be available to anyone who believes they have a legitimate complaint against a tournament director or players to bring their grievances and possibly get some assurance that the people will be held responsible for their actions, or at least warned against future negative actions should they repeat.
With such a committee in place, there should be NO EXCUSE for such public airing of dirty laundry and publicly defaming others, and that act would be considered to be in violation of the Standards of Ethical Practice of the USBGF we hope to have in place and adopted and accepted by the membership.
If we hope to attract more players, if we hope to attract sponsors, if we hope to make club and tournament play more pleasant for all, we need to see that this kind of open, negative, unproductive complaining and accusations do not happen.
There are many things about Ray I truly like and respect, but this was diatribe was embarrassing and disgusting, and I don't know of a single person who was there that disagreed with me. And again, this has nothing at all to do with the facts of what happened in L.A.--that's immaterial to this event.
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