The recently concluded EA International Open Bridge Championships has raised an uncomfortable question which has led to tumultuous discussion in various bridge groups.
The matter, being sensitive as it were, has raised more than a few eyebrows. The suddenness of the event has caused consternation to several members of the bridge fraternity and definitely calls for some comment.
While some of the comments will be definitely critical in nature, let me hasten to add that the outlook is more in terms of what should be done in the future rather than what has happened in the past. Further, all points mentioned in this article are based on information available in the public domain.
The article should be read in that spirit. In the event that I have missed something, I would welcome readers to append their views as comments to the article so that all facets of this issue can be located one place.
The trigger has been the allowing a couple of players, who were competing in the play offs, to participate in the mixed pairs eliminations. This will give rise to a multitude of issues, some of which I will attempt to enunciate and elucidate upon.
Why was this decision taken so suddenly?
A major cause for concern is the fact that nowhere was an official announcement to this effect made. The whole thing was done in a very hush hush manner.
The decision to allow this participation was ostensibly taken after SD Associates qualified for the finals in a rather dramatic manner. The rationale for the decision appears to have been that the female partners of the two participants had flown in specifically for this event and it may have been unfair to deny them the opportunity to participate in their event.
There are many issues with this reasoning.
As a matter of public record, the top two finishers of the mixed pairs event were members of the Tricolor Titans, who narrowly lost out to SD Associates. Would any one of their pairs have been given a similar concession? Indeed, we have no way of knowing whether this decision had been thought through before the result of their match. Were Satya and Kiran Nadar, who have been part of the Indian mixed pairs teams for the past several international events, offered this opportunity? We hope that it had been thought through so that the policy could have been implemented no matter who won the tie.
A number of ladies refrained from participating in the mixed pairs event on the off chance that their male counterparts would have qualified for the semi finals and they would not have been able to participate. Had they been made aware of this facility, they may have attempted to participate.
Is this decision going to be implemented similarly going forward?
Implementing this kind of policy has many ramifications. A couple of them are listed below.
- You could theoretically set up a Gold Team of 6 members. Any player could participate separately in up to 6 Silver Teams as long as 4 members are playing the Gold Event. While this of course is an extreme situation, a loose association of 10 players (4 Gold, 4 Silver, 2 Floating) comes to everybody's mind.
- Another, more insidious possibility is that a star player could be fielded in the Swiss League for qualifying. Post qualification, he would withdraw and do his own thing. I understand that something of this sort was actively being contemplated at the time of the Interstate. I am unaware whether it was actually implemented or not.
How are the players going to be awarded ranking points?
There are many models that could be considered. It is not clear what is going to be applied in this case but, if we are going to allow this, a transparent model should be designed. A few thoughts are
- Allow the multiple event participants (Participants) to retain ranking points of both events
This, of course, is tantamount to double dipping, especially when they have not participated beyond a given stage. - Award the Participants the ranking points till the stage at which they have participated in the first event and let them enjoy the ranking points of the second.
- Penalize the team of the Participants for utilizing the services of the participants to reach the stage they do and award them say 50% of the ranking points they would have obtained. This will prevent repetitions of incidents like this.
- Do not let the Participants enjoy the Ranking Points associated with the Mixed Pairs event. Further, allow them to have only 50% of the ranking points the pair would have obtained till the round that they played. This will have the effect of deterring the recurrence of such actions.
Many variations of this can be devised. What is important, however, is to have a policy in place which can be implemented uniformly across all situations.
In Conclusion
There is, of course the issue of where some participants were denied this facility. How do you redress their grievances. Unfortunately, I do not have the answer to that.
But, to some it up, these are the points that the BFI needs to pay attention to
- Announcement of all actions being taken on their website whenever they are taken.
- Be transparent in your actions
- Look at all the ramification of your actions. In this particular case, they may be more that I have missed.
To conclude, we would like to reiterate that this post is not a criticism of any player, or of any decision taken by the BFI. It is just looking at the past before this decision and the aftermath of the same.
Players can reflect on the same at their leisure
Disclaimer : All opinions are entirely those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the BridgeFromHome Team.