[yaukiwai]

Hi all. I am quite frustrated about an unexpected email reply from bbo support team in the below sequence:-
The staff stated that my double means 16+. I want to know is it true?
Sorry to brother as I am not quite familiar with 2/1 system.

Bidding

Many thanks.
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background in case you want to know:
I was playing a automated pair tournament of 6 board.
In the last board, my partner concealed all 13 tricks. I thought he was trying to destroy others result for whatever reason. So, I sent an email to bbo support team. Today, I received their reply and they mentioned as below:-

You mentioned that your partner was selected randomly for this round.

Usually players would agree on system and play beforehand, it appears that you and bridgear** did not get to that.

Let's assume bridgear** were under the impression that you are playing 2/1 - the pass would then be ligit. Given that your double meant 16+ points.

Please make sure that you agree on a system in the future with any partner, especially if it is a random partner,

[mycroft]

Almost certainly your responder didn't read the auction correctly.

But it is legal to pass takeout doubles. And you can't complain to BBO about bad bidding by partner - even in an individual.

Having said that, the claim was "ragequit" which is illegal; and accepting it is also illegal. Law 79A2.

But there probably isn't damage, and partner likely knew that. So he wasn't trying to "destroy others' result". He was just accepting his zero (which he well deserved for that braino) and going on to the next board.

It's likely that in the play, declarer would take 9 or 10 tricks. So the correct claim would be for -460 instead of -760. Which still scores zero - and -360 if you held it to 9 would only be worth 5%. So no damage, as it turns out.

[johnu]

I doubt this was an official BBO spokesman. This looks like a private tournament run by a private BBO user who is not employed by BBO and does not speak for them.

In any case, the statement

Quote

Let's assume bridgear** were under the impression that you are playing 2/1 - the pass would then be ligit. Given that your double meant 16+ points.

is just pure nonsense and is bridge illiterate. Your double is pure takeout, 1000%, no if's, and's or but's. West has the world's easiest takeout to hearts. Either West misclicked when passing, or is a total beginner player.

[johnu]

mycroft, on 2021-October-29, 10:55, said:

But there probably isn't damage, and partner likely knew that. So he wasn't trying to "destroy others' result". He was just accepting his zero (which he well deserved for that braino) and going on to the next board.

It's likely that in the play, declarer would take 9 or 10 tricks. So the correct claim would be for -460 instead of -760. Which still scores zero - and -360 if you held it to 9 would only be worth 5%. So no damage, as it turns out.

West was trying to destroy his partner's results. He wasn't accepting his zero, he was just being an a-hole. It's highly unlikely that West gave any thought to the likely result if the board was correctly played out.

[yaukiwai]

Thanks everyone for solving my frustration.

By the way, the email was from "abuse@bridgebase.com", I think it is official.

I was even removed from the tournament after that board. Now I cannot check the records in my tournament records.

johnu, on 2021-October-29, 16:59, said:

I doubt this was an official BBO spokesman. This looks like a private tournament run by a private BBO user who is not employed by BBO and does not speak for them.

In any case, the statement

is just pure nonsense and is bridge illiterate. Your double is pure takeout, 1000%, no if's, and's or but's. West has the world's easiest takeout to hearts. Either West misclicked when passing, or is a total beginner player.

[johnu]

yaukiwai, on 2021-October-29, 18:34, said:

Thanks everyone for solving my frustration.

By the way, the email was from "abuse@bridgebase.com", I think it is official.

If that was an "official" response, then I liked it better when abuse@bridgebase.com was a black hole and people never got any information from them.

[mycroft]

johnu, on 2021-October-29, 17:10, said:

West was trying to destroy his partner's results. He wasn't accepting his zero, he was just being an a-hole. It's highly unlikely that West gave any thought to the likely result if the board was correctly played out.

It does depend on when he claimed. If it was right away, he was either in "oh ****, I just passed a takeout bid, they're going to make overtricks, this will be awful, no need to actually waste time playing it" or "I just want to screw around" - but on board 1?

If it was once he realised that it wasn't the penalty double he thought it was - maybe even when dummy and their 4 trumps came down - then same argument, but not "just want to screw around".

Either way, it wasn't polite, it wasn't right, and it wasn't legal (nor was the acceptance). But I've seen it done. Once I even heard about it being penalized (instead of 3D-9, it was 3D-7 for the same zero and a procedural penalty for "lack of care or attention" and "claiming loss of a trick that was impossible to lose"). But I've also seen 1♦xx+3 for 1000 (even though it's not 1000, it's just a zero) show up on a ticket; we confirmed it was a "doesn't matter what the score is, it's zero matchpoints and everybody knows it", put in the actual score, and continued.

I'm sorry for the OP - shouldn't need to deal with this kind of garbage. But unfortunately, there's a lot of it out there, and not all of it is caught the first or second time.