Backgammon Chouettes

Chouettes

Legal plays only

From:   Gregg Cattanach
Address:   gcattanach@sprich.com
Date:   14 August 2001
Subject:   Legal play rule in Chouettes
Forum:   rec.games.backgammon
Google:   afbeae78.0108140513.7665cc2b@posting.google.com

We had some disagreement about implementing the legal plays rule in our chouette last night. How do you handle this situation? First, we do use the 'legal plays' rule in our chouette where any player can call attention to an illegal play and have it corrected. There isn't any problem if the next player hasn't rolled his dice. However, in the play in question, the Captain rolled his dice and then the team saw and brought attention to the fact that the Box had made an illegal play. I see three ways to solve this, all having some rationale:<br> 1) Player-1 must change his move to something legal and Player-2's roll stands as thrown.<br> 2) Player-1 must change his move to something legal and Player-2 must re-roll.<br> 3) Because Player-2 has already rolled his dice, the illegal play must stand as moved.

Phill Skelton writes:

There's also a 4th reasonable option - player 1 must change his move to a legal one, and player 2 has the option of re-rolling or not. I like this one, since it means that 1 can't play knowing what the dice will be (2 might re-roll once 1 has moved), but 2 has the option of keeping a good roll and not being penalised by the illegal move (as in your case). If this seems biased in favour of 2, then that's life; 1 should have made a legal move in the first place. You might want to throw in a corollary to the effect that if 1's move would be the same regardless of what 2 threw, then 2 doesn't have the option to re-roll, but I imagine that that would lead to some very subjective opinions and bad disagreements. So it's probably best avoided.

Julian Hayward writes:

It has to be 3. In (1) the captain has the advantage of being able to decide between playing on - by not calling attention to the illegal move - or calling in the illegal move based on the knowledge of his next roll, which is disproportionate to the original offence. In (2) the captain has the even bigger advantage of being able to choose between playing on and taking another roll. If the captain isn't watching then that's tough. And if the team want to call in the illegal move but the captain rolls, that's tough again. By playing the game the team are implicitly accepting the captain's (lack of) judgement - why should this be a special case?

Jive Dadson writes:

Any time player-1 makes an illegal play, player-2 has the option of pointing it out or not. Even if he is supposed to point it out if he notices, there's no way to force him to. He can gain an advantage by choosing to point it out or not. If you employ rule 1 or 2, that advantage is increased, because player-2 has more information when he makes the decision. If you want to limit the advantage player-2 can gain when player-1 makes an illegal move, you must choose 3. Rules 1 and 2 will lead to a lot more arguments. Rule 3 is the obvious winner.

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