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BGonline.org Forums
Ruling in Madison
Posted By: phil simborg In Response To: Ruling in Madison (Chuck Bower)
Date: Monday, 6 September 2010, at 4:37 p.m.
There is often confusion when discussing these kinds of situations. You are actually asking two different questions:
1. what is the proper ruling according to the current rules of the ABT?; and
2. what should the rule be?
Then we also have to grapple with a third question:
even if we know what the rule is, how strictly should the opponent and/or tournament director enforce it?
I have always believed the EVERY RULE should be stated clearly (as "most" are currently) to avoid ambiguity about the rule itself.
Where the current rules fall short is in the application of the rules. Many rules state what the rule is, but is unclear as to exactly how the rule should be enforced, what the penalty is for violation of the rule, and whether or not the rule should be strictly enforced or if it is the kind of rule that should require a warning.
The argument I have heard (from Bill Davis and others) against having rules that do this is that the rules would be too long, and even if you tried to cover all the things that are likely to happen, you won't cover everything anyway.
While I agree that to some extent that is true, I do believe you can cover the most common occurrences and avoid ambiguity on those, and the few odd things that come up you can still go to the tournament director to decide. As for the rules being too long, I also agree that could be a problem, and that is why I believe there should be a separate "guide" to the rules for serious players and tournament directors that more fully describes the meaning of the rule, the intent of the rule, and the ramifications of infractions.
As for the idea that even when there is a clearly stated rule, a player should get a warning for a first infraction, I think that is perfectly fine, and should be stated, for novice players. By the time someone is a serious tournament player in the advanced, intermediate, or Open divisions (particularly the open) they should take the time to read and know the rules and if they roll too fast, or forget to move a checker from the bar, or forget to check what score they are supposed to play to, they should be able to suffer the consequences gracefully.
As it is now, we have people in the open division who think it is poor sportsmanship to insist that your opponent follow the rules exactly unless you give them warning. Again, in lower divisions that might be a reasonable approach, but I expect my opponents to hold me to the rules exactly and completely and I will do the same without guilt. If you pick up the cube, you had better double or I will call the director. If you roll too fast, I will take the option of accepting or making you roll over. And I expect the same from you.
Clock rules are a little different, only because clocks are relatively new and many kinds of clocks are different. If my opponent makes a mistake and hits the wrong button on the clock, I would certainly tell him and help him; or if he forgets to pause it between games and it's running on his time, I would certainly stop and offer to make an adjustment.
Now, since the ABT has not made this additional guide or extension to its rules to cover these kinds of problems, I think it should be left to the Rules Committees of the various federations...and rather than have 12 sets of rules, what I'd really like to see is an international committee be formed with people from Denmark, Germany, Japan, the U.S., England, etc. get together and agree on a comprehensive international set of tournament rules that we can all use and covers all of these points.
How to accomplish this is simply the leaders of those groups getting together to agree to do this. The ABT, of course, and anyone else who runs tournaments, can decide whether they want to adopt these rules or not...but if the rules are good and standardized around the world, I would think all tournament directors would be relieved to have those rules to apply.
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