In the LCBA Winter League, the rules governing what to do when a pair arrives late, or not at all, were radically revised at the start of the 2016-17 season. The previous rules were considered too draconian towards the offending side.
The new rules address this imbalance in order to achieve a more sensible match result, but still penalise the offending team.
The rules cover the two key issues of:
- How to remove and score boards when a pair turns up late.
- What to do when a pair fails to turn up.
When a pair fails to turn up, then you have the option of either abandoning the match or playing it as a Teams of Four match. The decision lies with the captain of the non-offending side. But if you wish to abandon the match if the pair fail to arrive by the end of the first stanza then you MUST make that decision BEFORE starting to play. Otherwise you default to playing it as a Teams of Four match.
Common sense says that you make that decision before starting to play. It wouldn’t be fair to decide to abandon the match AFTER you went for a silly -100 on one of the early boards.
If you play as a Teams of Four then there is a different VP scale. The non-offending captain choose to rotate some or all of his team, or just play his two strongest pairs. The offending captain has to rotate his three pairs.
The import things to note are:
- If you wish to abandon then you must make that decision before the start of play.
- Read the rules carefully about how to remove boards for late arrivals.