From john at pagat.com Fri Jul 1 09:55:38 2005 From: john at pagat.com (John McLeod) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 14:55:38 +0100 Subject: [Bska] Synchron Skat - rule suggestion for misdeals Message-ID: The official Skat tournament rules say that if a misdeal is discovered after the players have looked at their cards, the hand is to be redealt. This is obviously not satisfactory for Synchron, except when a hand is played for the first time, in which case the Tournament Director can substitute a fresh deal for the misdealt hand. The printed Synchron rules give no guidance on this that I can find. My suggestion is that in the event of a misdeal which cannot easily be corrected without giving unauthorised information to any of the players, the hand should be scored as though all players had passed. This would apply when one player picks up some cards belonging to another player, or when a hand is dealt rotated or with two hands swapped. Since scores are in general positive, the suggested rule tends to penalise everyone at the table (except the dealer at a 4-player table), which is reasonable, considering that everyone should be taking care that they have the right cards, and checking their hands face down before looking at the faces of their cards. In practice this rule will obviously be a greater disadvantage to the player who was going to win the hand. A fairer rule would be something like this: give each of the players an average score for the hand and subtract a 50-point penalty from anyone who has looked at the wrong cards. However, this would be a little messy to implement with the current scoring arrangements. Recording the hand as passed out, although rough justice, has the merit of great simplicity. Comments welcome, especially from tournament directors. -- John McLeod For information on card games visit john at pagat.com http://www.pagat.com/