Saturday, October 22, 2011

Rules and how to interpret them


OK a short blog here and for which I’m looking for feedback. This weekend, I’ve been playing in the Dominion Regional playdowns (yes, your humble servant is a club champion!). One of the new rules introduced this year for any competition leading to a national championship is that you flip a coin before the game with the winner of the flip getting choice of rocks or practice.
At least, that’s what I’m sure it was supposed to be.

Here’s what the rule reads: “. . . teams will conduct a coin toss to determine choice of stone colour or first practice.”

Now what we were told was that the winner of the toss gets a pick of either rock colour or first practice. And the loser gets what’s left.

So let’s say Team A wins the toss. It chooses red rocks and therefore automatically gets second practice (which I believe is preferable). The loser of the toss, Team B, gets no say in anything (unless, of course, the winner of the toss picks first practice) and has to take first practice. Whoever wins the toss also can’t select second practice.

Does that seem right? Shouldn’t the scenario be winner of the toss gets choice of rocks or practice the loser gets choice of what the winner doesn’t select.

I tried to argue this with the volunteer official but she said, no, the loser of the toss gets no selection.

What do you think? Is this a misinterpretation of the rule? Or is the rule just stupid?

5 comments:

. said...

Seems to me "first choice" is implied, though in this poorly written rule, first and choice are separated.

I agree it should read "teams will conduct a coin toss to determine first choice of stone colour or first choice of practice.”

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brad said...

That official is wrong. The winner of the coin toss either gets second practise or choice of rock colour, not both. I have played in a fair number of events like this and this is the way it has always been. I've never seen it where the winner of the coin toss gets both second practise and rock colour.

janarama said...

I too was participating in this event; the official, I spoke with agreed the rule seemed misworded. She proceeded to contact Doug Bakes, the General Manager of the OCA, who stated that the rule would be followed as written. The rule is printed in the OCA rules supplement dated 8/31/11. My concern is how many people in this organization read that document and failed to pick up the error that was immediately evident to the competitors. According to the official, Mr. Bakes stated that this rule will be followed for the season.

wrw1105 said...

It's so frustrating that even with a simple rule such as this, logic can't prevail. I asked her what would be the situation if the team winning the toss elected to take first practice. Would the losing team then be assigned a rock colour? She said no, to which I then pointed out the total absurdity of the rule. If the winning team takes rock colour, the losing team has not choice. But if the winning team takes first practice, the losing team gets a choice.
In any case, it really didn't cause any big issues at this level of play, just that it was so clearly wrong and the official either wasn't permitted or wasn't willing to change it.