Diplomacy World #103 - Fall 2008 Issue

not put his orders in the box. This was noticed after
orders had been substantially read. Chris Martin
challenged whether the orders should be read and he
suggested that the player may have two sets of orders.
One of the tournament directors allowed the orders to be
read, which clearly was the wish of all the other players,
except Chris Martin. I was watching the game, and used
this as an example in discussions in a newsgroup and
elsewhere later. (I wasn’t second guessing the call.) At
Bangor Dipcon 41 a player did not put his orders into the
box and there was some question about where original
orders maybe. Tom ruled against allowing the player’s
orders. I didn’t see the situation, but I know that all of
the players were okay with the decision. The player was
my son, Peyton.
I made two calls related to orders. The first involved my
son Peyton again. The structure of the orders was
intended to be:
A moves to C; B supports A to C
The problem was that he omitted an S for supports,
definitely a problem. This occurred in the first round
minutes after I had given the criteria that informed
players that I would allow such an order. I was called to
the table; I didn’t see the board. I could see that people
with one exception were inclined to let it go. One player
seemed inclined to let it go, but wanted me to rule
because it involved my son and presented an
opportunity to paint the tournament as biased. Also, he
was technically correct. My son looked embarrassed.
My first inclination was to say too bad Peyton because
he was my son; however, I immediately realized that he
was probably allied with someone and the ruling would
impact other players, positively and negatively. One of
the players said, what do you think his intention was?
Instantly, I read off what was the obvious intention of a
sloppy order writer, not one player complained.
In the other case, a player had a structure that was
essentially two adjacent units attacking an unsupported
unit of another player. However, the fundamental
difference was that one of his units eligible to supply
support could be cut by another defending unit. I had to
rule against the order. The person who wrote the order
wasn’t upset because he had to look at the board
several times to determine what he had been thinking!
Jim Burgess and Chris Campbell were present for both
of my rulings. Later, it would be alleged that I ruled
inconsistently in my favor. Bull. Chris Campbell was the
defender in the second case and avoided losing Warsaw
as Russia in the Fall of 1901, and he wanted me to rule
against upholding the order! Jim Burgess was his ally in
Turkey. I was playing in the second game, discovered
the problem in the order, and ruled against my ally. The
decision didn’t impact the outcome of the game. 6
6 Steve Cooley later, in a conference call 7/30/08, had portrayed the
positions as being exactly the same (the sound quality was miserable
Diplomacy World #103 - Page 48
Seeding the Rounds: Generally speaking a simplistic
Windows program that I wrote in a low end programming
language called Liberty Basic was used. On a fast
computer and with the largest known Diplomacy
tournaments requiring very little data crunching, the
program executes everything instantaneously. In
Vancouver, a few people suggested that I use Manus
Hand’s DTM software;
On 8/19/2007, I wrote to Manus this email:
“Hello Manus,
At WDC 17, several people suggested that I obtain a
copy of DTM. Please send me a copy at
websterdtpl@gmail.com. Also, Dipcon 41 will be held in
Bangor, Maine. I would be happy to help you with
accommodations. Thank you, David Webster”
September 9, 2008, (after Bangor Dipcon 41) Manus
responded,
“My horrible apologies for taking so long to get to this! I
have been ignoring this email address for a very long
time (bad Manus!). I now have 3500+ mails to go
through. You can download the DTM at
http://www.diplom.org/armada/dtm/DTM[3.12.19].zip
My profuse apologies. Manus”
Immediately after Vancouver I pursued a copy of the
NADF approved seeding software. I never received it. In
the aftermath of Bangor Dipcon 41 and being labeled a
cheat, I mentioned that I had attempted to use the
NADF’s software, even though I had my own. Soon
thereafter, I received the email from Manus. For the
record, you must get the link from Manus by asking him
through email, this is explicitly stated as a requirement.
I’m not blaming Manus. It is ironic that one justification
for stripping Bangor was slow response times to Edi
Birsan’s requests. Please note the NADF software
linked site was 3500+ mails behind. Likewise, you may
or may not recall that the NADF home website was not
updated from September 2007 until May 30, 2008.
The computer software that seeded the boards was
supposed to be used by Dennis Hutchins. Someone
needs to input the players for the tournament, and then
select those who are actually playing in a round. In most
cases, the software prevents family members from
playing on the same board. No family member played on
on the call.) So bad, that I am not positive what precisely Steve had
said. I contested any representation about the orders being equivalent
situations. Steve was present at the first ruling, and over a hundred
yards away in the television studio being filmed when the second
decision was made. He flatly does not have a basis to be talking
about this issue. I was not allowed time to make this point in the
conference call.