[Bska] Synchron Skat - rule suggestion for misdeals

[John McLeod]

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/