I have spent most of this morning listening to complaints about last night’s slow play.  This is extremely disappointing, considering the effort put into making sure every member was made aware of the rulings of slow play, last year.

Each individual is responsible for their speed of play and must not rely on the director.

All the directors must enforce the rules and penalties which we agreed last year, and the members must accept the rulings given by the directors.

In summary, there is 7 minutes per board with 1 minute added for moving to a new table between rounds. The Director should warn the pair(s) for the first offence.  Subsequent slow play will incur a procedural penalty which is 10% of a top at matchpoints, 120 points at aggregate, or 3 IMPs.

Any boards unplayed should be scored as 40% for the offending pair and 60% for the non-offending pair.

The Director normally warns a slow contestant once before imposing a penalty but he is not obliged to do so.   In particular, he should impose an immediate penalty on pairs who are frequent offenders.   Boards removed because of slow play are not played later, even if there is sufficient time.

If you would like to read the rules of slow play they are available on sbu.org.uk/index.php/council/laws-ethics.

Please can we make bridge a fun night and not have it explained to me as “dire”, which is what last night was called.

Jean Mole

9 September 2015