Lying in my bed at the Congress Plaza I take a look at Espen’s scorecards from the day before (I hardly ever score myself). Soon I find the score card for the third session and can see that we scored the 4 spade contract as a push! Which means that the match actually should have been a tie after the 2 IMP change from the appeal! Could there be more IMPs floating around? 7.30 AM I call Richie at the Hilton and asks him to get the team together to look through the hands.
With only two hours sleep (I am not sure how many hours the rest of the team was able to sleep) it goes much slower than usual to go through hands. We decide to call Matt Smith to check if there is something which can be done with the missing IMP. At the same time we search for more hands which could have been mis-scored and we also call various members of the Cayne team. Would they give us some extra boards as a gesture of fair play?
Matt Smith looks into the case together with another TD, and he says that this issue has to be solved by them (the TDs, i.e. the rules of the game). The two teams in question can not decide to play extra boards in the spirit of the game.
Close to noon we get the final message; it’s too late to change the score. We lost.
At the third floor where the TDs have their base I meet Lotan next to the elevators. I ask him about what really happened regarding his misclaim and tells him that this does not look good on him. “I misguessed trumps and miscounted my tricks in frustration. I made a mistake. It happens.” “No, Lotan, you never make these kind of mistakes.” I compare it to the Nunes defense against a slam with two aces where Nunes went for a ruff before cashing the other ace. It just doesn’t look good in the public eye. “Do you call me a cheater?“ is his response when he feels pressured. “No, I didn’t call you a cheater, but this does not look good.”