[pran]

campboy, on Aug 20 2010, 11:07 AM, said:

I think you have missed out one of the top (and most troublesome) answers, viz: score is plausible given the contract, but doesn't agree with the number of tricks written.

In that case many directors I know (including myself) use the following procedure unless we can easily establish what should have been recorded (we also announce this procedure to the players):

When we use computer scoring typing the recorded contract and number of tricks we let that override the manually calculated score on the slip.

When we use manually scoring we look only at the manually calculated score and ignore the recorded contract and number of tricks.

[campboy]

Yes, it's important to have a set procedure if the players involved have left or don't agree on what actually happened. I believe more standard in the EBU (what I was taught in the TD course, anyway) is to leave the numerical score unchanged whenever possible.

[mycroft]

McBruce, on Aug 19 2010, 09:10 PM, said:

4 - Wrong E-W Pair Number (most N-S players are trained to ignore this one)

most N-S players couldn't figure it out if their next game's N-S seating depended on it. Those that do know how tend to also be able to enter scores, and know that you're not going to look at it unless there's another problem (and therefore ignore it).

[Coelacanth]

campboy, on Aug 20 2010, 05:07 AM, said:

I think you have missed out one of the top (and most troublesome) answers, viz: score is plausible given the contract, but doesn't agree with the number of tricks written.

Also missing from the list is "score is not plausible given the contract".

In a recent tournament I scored up 3NT making 6 for plus 990 NS. Our opponents signed off on the pickup slip. We'd had an up and down session, so I was quite surprised to see upon returning from lunch that we'd won the event.

After correcting the score we dropped back to 3rd.

Anyway, this is the most common error-type I see on travelers. 3NT making 990 or 650.

[JoAnneM]

Maybe they were playing with three hands from one board and one hand from another board - which actually happened in my club, and no one noticed. Keywords here are CLUB GAME. I did notice when I came to the table to hurry them along and they were on their 10th trick.

[aguahombre]

..........

[bluejak]

aguahombre, on Aug 21 2010, 01:56 AM, said:

..........

Agreed.

[lamford]

campboy, on Aug 16 2010, 01:01 PM, said:

One Short, on Aug 16 2010, 04:37 PM, said:

This is disputed by a pair who, having played the same board later at another table, claim that it was impossible to arrive at the contract of 3NT let alone make it

On the contrary, there are, by my count, 12443642546855641088 ways for the pair in question to have arrived at 3NT.

I disagree. Including accepted insufficient bids, there are an infinite number of ways any pair could reach 3NT.

[RMB1]

lamford, on Aug 24 2010, 05:57 PM, said:

campboy, on Aug 16 2010, 01:01 PM, said:

...
On the contrary, there are, by my count, 12443642546855641088 ways for the pair in question to have arrived at 3NT.

I disagree. Including accepted insufficient bids, there are an infinite number of ways any pair could reach 3NT.

(There is a variation in tense between these two statements.)
Given that bridge has been in existence for <100 years, the finiteness of the population, and the limitations from the speed of sound and speed of light as to how fast auctions can happen, there is a large finite bound on the number of ways (including irregularities) any pair could have arrived in any contract.

If each auction takes at least one second, and all the world's 7 billion population have been doing nothing but having contract bridge auctions* for the last 100 years, that is "only"
3x10^7 x 10^2 x 7x10^9/4 = 5x10^18 auctions
less than half of campboy's number.

* and if they had, how did the 7 billion people come to be born

[Pict]

I think anyone inclined to call the TD (as advised here) should be told to ignore the entirety of this post, following the OP.