December 2016 - 6

IN FIRST SEAT

Check those scores

American Contract Bridge League

I've been playing duplicate bridge for 35 years,
but I confess that I have a bad habit about one
phase of the game in particular: I don't carefully
check my scores at the end of the session. Oh, I
look to see what my matchpoint awards are ("Oh
well, another zero!"), but I am terrible about
checking to make sure that the score on Board
16 was really plus 140 instead of plus 110. Yes, I know that at-the-table
scoring devices allow me to check the scores at the end of each round,
but I admit to being careless then, too. And sometimes my partner is in
charge of the task of checking the BridgeMate scores, so it's his fault (like
everything else that happens at the table) if the opponents get plus 420 in
their column instead of ours.
If this were a flaw specific to just little ol' me, it wouldn't be a big deal,
but there's lots of evidence to suggest that many players suffer from the
same affliction. And these oversights can be expensive. As you may have
heard, the recent World Open Pairs in Wroclaw, Poland, was decided by
just such an oversight. After the event was over, it was discovered that
the pair who had won the gold medal - Roy Welland and Sabine Auken,
representing Germany - had benefitted from a scoring error against a
Polish pair, pushing them into the winners' circle, just ahead of Ashley
Bach and Michael Cornell of New Zealand.
The World Bridge Federation found itself in a difficult spot. It was obvious to everyone that a scoring error had occurred (Welland and Auken
were the only plus 450 in a sea of minus 650s for their direction), but the
official correction period had expired. The WBF eventually decided to
award joint gold medals to the pairs involved, but this was a headache
that they would have preferred to avoid. To be fair, the situation was a
bit more complicated than just a wrong score being entered. The contest
was a multi-session event held over several days. A technical problem
during the round where the bad score was entered prevented the players
from seeing their scores until the next session was underway. A brutally
short correction period (which has created an outcry that such periods
be extended for future tournaments) made detecting the error in a timely
fashion all but impossible. And there was no way for Bach and Cornell to
know that Welland and Auken had enjoyed a windfall on a board from an
earlier session.
Although the situation was resolved, it has caused me to be more serious about checking my scores. Just as players are required to count their
cards before play begins, so should they be in the habit of checking their
results, regardless of how good or bad those results may be.
Paul Linxwiler, Editor

6 Bridge Bulletin December 2016

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Bulletin
BRIDGE

Editor: Paul Linxwiler
Managing Editor: Sue Munday
Associate Editor: Chip Dombrowski
Graphic Design /Layout: Cindy Hill
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of December 2016