Laws of bridge (6)

An interesting question has to do with the position of appeal committees. We all know that decisions made by TD's meet severe criticism once in a while. But decisions by appeal committees are not less disputable. One of the shortcomings of appeal committees is that they want to be more clever than they should, giving rather personal interpretations of the laws they need to apply to justify their decisions*. We have two of those examples already in the couple of decisions taken in this championship. This makes those decisions rather unpredictable and that encourages teams to appeal TD-decisions even when they estimate their chances to be small. 'You never know how a cow may catch a hare' as we say in Dutch. There are some (in)famous examples of those in the history of bridge. Furthermore bridge seems to be one of the few sports in which the decision by the TD is not final, and not rarely decisions by appeal committees seem to decide the outcome of a match (if not, appeals at the end of a match are not made).

When we do without appeal committees there always could be built in some assurances like strong players as advisors of the TD (as prescribed in the Code of Practice). The problems with respect to the quality of the decisions will certainly be more serious on the club level than in international bridge events with quite capable TD's.

You understand the question coming now: Do you like appeal committees to be the upper judge in bridge or should we give that authority to the TD?

Ton Kooijman

* It is not jealousy that makes me say this. I am the chairman of the national appeal committee in my country and I know that it is not easy to avoid inventing brilliant decisions and to stick to the laws. .