COURT CASE PROGRESS REPORT 1

The pre-hearing was conducted on 10/09/2014. There are some procedural routine matters that would take at least one more week before the court would decide on a hearing date.

If you are fully aware of all aspects of this unique case, you can guess the final outcome. Courts are fair institutions. No amount of obfuscation, pretence or plastic smiles can affect their judgement. 

OBFUSCATION IS THE NAME OF THE GAME

Members of ASPA(Vic) are in receipt of this circular:

Dear Members,

As some of you may be aware, Mohammed Hegazi, a current ASPA (Vic) Inc. member, recently filed a Complaint and Statement of Claim in the Victorian Magistrates' Court against Marjorie Miller, the current Secretary of ASPA (Vic) Inc.  Mr Hegazi's claim arises from the Committee decision in 2008 to suspend his participation in Victorian rated tournaments for 12 months as a result of various complaints which had been lodged with the Committee. Mr Hegazi complied with the suspension from October 2008 to September 2009, and has resumed playing in Victorian rated tournaments.

In suing Mrs Miller, Mr Hegazi brought his action against the wrong party, as the decision to suspend him was made by ASPA (Vic) Inc., not Mrs Miller in her personal capacity.  On 28 July, Mr Hegazi was given leave by the Magistrates' Court to substitute ASPA (Vic) Inc. as the defendant, and discontinue the proceeding against Mrs Miller.

The matter will now continue in the Magistrates' Court.  A mediation has been listed for 10 September 2014, before a Registrar of the Court.

The Committee is hopeful of resolving the dispute at mediation, and has attempted to resolve it with Mr. Hegazi on numerous occasions in the past three years.

If the matter does not settle at the mediation, it will likely proceed to a hearing, expected to be later in 2014.

As the dispute is a matter before the courts, the Committee would appreciate all members' restraint from discussing the matter with the Committee or Mr. Hegazi.

Yours faithfully,

CAROL JOHNSEN

President, ASPA (Vic) Inc.

----------------------------------------------------------

The legal action is against an improper and illegal unfounded finding that I had been "guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of ASPA (Vic) Inc. and prejudicial to the interests of the Association." This baseless illegal nonsense is what is being challenged in the courts.

As to the ban from playing in Victorian tournaments, I was so disgusted, to the extent that I had a self-imposed much longer ban from 2008 to 2011.

Mediation has always been frustrated because the Committee, against my requests, has consistently chosen to be represented by members who were personally involved in the dispute and had vested interest in frustrating mediation efforts, namely Carol Johnsen, Marjorie Miller and Trevor Halsall. By the way, on 10/09/2014 there will be a “pre-hearing” to which ASPA(Vic) has been summoned by Ringwood Magistrates’ Court. It is not a mediation session as claimed above. Mediation was finished and done with in 2012 at the Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria, Department of Justice. If ASPA (Vic) make the same mistake and is represented by any delegate with vested interest in continuing to cover up (namely CJ, MM, and TH), the matter would progress to a hearing. It would certainly mean extra legal cost to the losing party. Courts are concerned with applying the letter of the law in a fair manner. They cannot be conned or swayed.

My return to play in Victoria began at the 2011 AGM tournament. It was for the sole purpose of observing the outcome of a motion moved by Tess Robinson and seconded by Geoff Wright. Obfuscation and lies, together with a secret ballot, decided the outcome of that motion. Most members of the Association did not have all the relevant information. From memory, the result of the motion was: 8 for, 35 against and 16 abstained. I did not cast a vote myself nor did Geoff or Tess, who were absent. Members of a committee of 10 casted votes. No proxies were available. No one knows what the outcome could have been, if the committee were honest enough to divulge all the relevant information. Maybe an apology for such an outrageous lie could have settled the matter once and for all.

Upon persisting sincere requests from several concerned Vic members, I am gradually returning to play in Victorian tournaments.
 

ASPA(Vic) members can ask me any questions by email (mohammedhegazi@gmail.com) or discuss the matter with me in person, should they want any further clarification. I have nothing whatsoever to hide. There is no legal obligation to prevent members from seeking information from me or anyone else. A member of the 2008 Committee has been quoted, "All they wanted was to get rid of him."

I am grateful to all members of ASPA(SA) for their continued warm welcome to all their regular tournaments, Matchplays and Pub tournaments. Nothing would prevent me from mingling with this superb SA membership, other than the hefty cost of travel.


Mohammed Hegazi
Member of ASPA (Vic) Inc.
Regular Visitor of ASPA (SA) Inc.

THE LATEST ON THE LEGAL FRONT

The pre-hearing of 30/07/2014 has now been “vacated”. This nice seven letter bingo would rid you of both the “V” and the “C”, but in legal jargon it means cancelled or abandoned. The reason is that on legal advice, I applied to the court in order to change the name of the defendant from “Marjorie Miller” to “Australian Scrabble Players Association (Victoria) Inc." The application order was granted. A new pre-hearing conference has been set for 10/09/2014.

The change would achieve two objectives. The first is to save us any more crocodile tears, the second is to ensure suing the Association as an entity represented by its Committee, not an individual.

WHY LEGAL ACTION?

This blog is indeed a mess as far as the chronological order of posts is concerned. Unless you followed it since its inception in mid 2008, it would be hard for you to follow what I am mumbling about.

I started this blog as a means of highlighting the problem of cheating in scrabble, without the need to point fingers at any particular individuals. I was, and still am, aiming at improving the wording of the rules and to insure their proper application. I believe that the laxity of applying the rules at club level is behind their prevailing infringement at tournaments.

The result was the improper persecution of me by the committee of ASPA(Vic) in 2008 and after. To this very day, MM still claims that, “Mohammed picks on vulnerable old ladies”.  When told by ME, my reply was to the effect that she was not a vulnerable old lady at the time I ‘accused her of cheating’ in 2005. When pressed to give me examples of the ‘vulnerable old ladies’, he cited MN. I told him that the lady in question is a close member of my club and would be the first to refute this claim.

So, MM is still continuing her hideous futile campaign of character assassination. She ignores the fact that, excluding her cronies, people who knew me firsthand would vouch to the absurdity of her claims.

KEEPING YOU INFORMED

The legal battle is heating up. I intended to sue ASPA(Vic), but instead inadvertently sued Marjorie Miller, being the current Secretary. But that is alright. She is the main character in this defamatory affair. Her friends on the committee would be quick to help. It takes only a couple of signatures to dip into the Associations' funds.

While both our colleague Harry Malcolm and myself tried in vain for six years to convince the incompetent committee to seek proper legal advice, they were now quick to hire a firm of solicitors in order to try to fight a lost case and inflate the legal cost.

They now have a last chance to consider coming to terms with reality and raise the white flag at the forthcoming pre-hearing conference on 30/07/2014. Failure would result in progression to a hearing, which means extra cost to the losing party. 

The legal system is a minefield of legal technicalities. I am negotiating it with extreme caution. Will post some good news after 5 weeks.

SEPARATED UNDER THE ONE ROOF

- If you have a nice venue for a three-day tournament, would you be happy?

- yes!

-  If that venue has a large hall for playing and another adjacent smaller room for coffee and refreshments, would you be happier?

- certainly!

- On the third day, would you run an extra minor tournament in that quiet smaller room?

- Maybe.

- Can you imagine how noisy and crowded it would be?

- Dunno.

- But you would give it a try though?

- Yes, I would certainly give it a try. It might create a pleasant carnival atmosphere on the third day of the major function, when players would be too tired to notice.

- If you trialled it four times in four years, and it turned out to be too noisy for the major tournament, would you still run two separate tournaments under the same roof?

- Dunno, I think next year might be one year away. Numbers might go further down anyway. We try to save on hiring halls.

- But you are losing thousands very soon on litigation with one disenchanted member, who claims that he already got you legally by your proverbial testicles.

- What? Who said that?

- There are claims that your committee is incompetent, especially the stagnant permanent members, and is sure to be refurbished for 2015.

- Rubbish! conspiracy theories abound. There is no Hurry for any change.  We are certainly competent beyond our own imagination.

HEGAZI VS ASPA(VIC) COURT CASE

At long last, the court case has been filed. I made it easy for Marj Miller by filing the case with the Magistrates’ Court at Ringwood, which is quite close to her home. We shall see now how scheming, obfuscation and deceit can withstand the force of the law. I will keep you informed when a hearing date is fixed. It would be the usual open hearing for the public, in case any members might be interested in watching the show that took about six years of trying to convince the culprits to be sensible and step back.

COMPLICATING SIMPLE RULES

I am told of a new amendment to the rules:

10.2(e) will read: "If your opponent has gone out, and hence neutralised the clock, you have approximately five seconds to accept or challenge the turn, otherwise your opponent is entitled to restart your clock"

I am amazed by the tendency to complicate simple rules. This problem can be solved by a simple adjustment to Rule 11.1 as follows:

Current Rule:
11.1(a) The player going out must neutralize the clock on completion of the final move.

An alternative suggested change:

11.1(a) If your opponent has gone out, you should subsequently neutralise the clock and either challenge or declare the end of the game.

The above would replace 11.1(a), 11.1(b) and 11.1(c)

11.1(d) becomes 11.1(b)

This would negate the need for the suggested addition of five seconds, which could be subject to disagreement as to whether the clock was started after exactly five seconds or after less than five seconds. Such disagreement could be crucial if the player involved is running out of time.

The new rule is simply bestowing on a player an undeserved extra 5 seconds over and above their allotted time of 25 minutes. In order to stretch the imagination of our rules officers here is a possible scenario:

Player A finishes with all his tiles and the bag is empty. Player B has only a couple of seconds on their clock. If player A is to neutralise the clock and wait for 5 seconds before starting player B’s clock, it would simply mean that player B is getting 5 extra seconds more than his allocated time of 25 minutes. But if player A is to start player B’s clock as an indication of the end of his turn, it would mean that player B is getting no more extra time on top of his allocated time of 25 minutes. All he has to do is to quickly neutralise the clock and either challenge or declare the game’s end.

I believe that any change to the rules must be discussed and accepted by the membership of all states. It should not be left totally to rules officers.

P.S.:

I think the above details might be difficult to grasp without making elaborate examination of the quasi-legalese wording of the rules. What I meant by the above unfavourable critique is: Neutralising the clock on going out is wrong, since the game is not finished because the player at the receiving end still has the option of challenging the last play of the opponent. Therefore, it would be more sensible if the player going out would operate his/her opponent's clock, as usual, after declaring the score and the notion of going out. The opponent would then neutralise the clock and either challenge or declare the end of the game. If the challege is successful, the challenged player takes his/her tiles off the board and the game continues. This last scenario emphasises the notion that GOING OUT IS NOT THE END OF THE GAME. THUS THE CLOCK SHOULD NOT BE NEUTRALISED ON GOING OUT. The player at the receiving end might be able to successfully challege, then hook a bingo and win the game! So, going out is not necessarily the end of the game as initially thought by our rules engineers. It is a virtue to admit being wrong and to correct the initial rule error, instead of correcting a mistake with another mistake. Yes, giving a player extra seconds is really a funny way to correct a rule's error. Do the right thing instead of being in denial.

I cannot make it any clearer.

AN INSULTING COMPLIMENT

From: Marj Miller

To: ozscrabble
Apr 21 at 10:35 PM

Well done to Daniel Piechnick from New South Wales for a really fine win in the 2014.

The above is more of an insult to Daniel. He is not just a passerby. It is well known far and wide within the scrabble community that Daniel Piechnick is a long-established champion from South Australia, not NSW.

This reminds me of an old quip by an anonymous writer: “Some speakers are much more appreciated with their mouth shut.”

ASPA RULES OFFICERS

We do have so called “Rules Officers”, who keep on dragging their feet towards rules reform. I suggested, in 2008 on this blog, the adoption of WESPA’s rule 3.9.2(c), commonly known as the ”open hand rule”. It was adopted by ASPA as rule 5.2 many years later in 2013. Inforcing the rule is almost totally neglected by tournament directors.

I have been asking for a further adoption of WESPA’s sensible rule no. 3.9.1, to replace ASPA’s ridiculous rule 5.1, which decides on the height of the bag when drawing tiles.  I asked on this blog, which is read by many ASPA players. I asked for the change on “Across the Board”, only to get an irrelevant response by another reader. I emailed my suggestion to about all of ASPA rules officers and had no response.

I never formally asked for any drastic reforms such as performing the calculation of scores outside play time. Such radical suggestion, regardless of its obvious merits, would raise all sorts of pedantic objections.

The role of rules officers in this organisation still baffles me. Is it just an honorary job on one of ASPA’s lists of dysfunctional officers?    

When Tournament Directors Lose the Plot

 The last Ballarat Tournament had 32 players in 3 divisions:
Division A: 10 players with rating range 1255-1611
Division B: 12 Players with rating range 747-1211
Division C: 10 Players with rating range 500-861

 

Don’t ask why the lowest rating in division B is lower than the highest rating in division C. You would not get a satisfactory answer. It could be related to the weight, height or age of players.

 The serious matter is that the TD in her wisdom, or lack thereof, told the congregation that it was a round robin, where each group of more than 7 players would play 6 rounds. Pairing was done in advance using a secret recipe known only to the ingenious TD. What she missed was that 32 players was an ideal figure for a round robin of 7 games and 4 groups. She would have returned home in Mornington even faster than she aimed to achieve by her innovation of "partial round robins".  

 

  

Riddling the Riddle

We have two versions of the results: the vesion declared by Marj Miller (MM) on the Ozscrabble forum, which we may call version 1; and the version declared by Carol Johnsen (CJ), which we may call version 2. The latter version was finally accepted and recorded by Martin Waterworth. Martin can only go by the files forwarded to him. I assume that he had the two versions of the file. I also assume that he would rather not involve himself by comparing the two versions.

We also have two explanations of this anomaly, one given by Mohammed (MH) and another given by CJ, after being challenged by Harry Malcolm.

MH claims that if a single error, in recording the result of game 10 between him and Lina Camilleri (LC), is properly corrected by reversing the scores of 382/276, the outcome would be LC winning third place by a total margin of 378.

CJ claimed that another error cropped up later, which is a second error recording the result of game 6 between LC and Eileen Mills (EM). A win by LC in version 1 was corrected by reversing the scores. So instead of LC winning by 8 points, she lost to EM by that much.

Without any further documentation or much ado, the smoking gun becomes clear: If LC lost to EM by only 8 points, and won against MH by the huge margin of 106 points, how can you explain her total margin in version I being identical to her total margin in version 2? Also, the only correction applied to EM results is a reversal of her score against LC, which involved a margin of 8 points only. How could you explain the total margin of EM leaping from 79 in version 1 to 109 in version 2? There has to be a series of corrections applied to version 1 in order to produce version 2. You don’t have to be a mathematician to come to this conclusion.

Version 1 of results published on Ozscrabble:

       W     M                                   Old   Chg  New

  1    9   +670  Gillian Renwick     974  +56   1030

  2    8   +303  Elize Plaganyi        803  +67  870

  3    7   +320  Norma Engel          911  +24  935

  4    6   +362  Lina Camilleri        802  +20   822

  5    6   +95   Gayle Cameron      810   +10  820

  6    6   -11   Carole Eden           874   +12  886

  7    6   -92    Brian Rowe          (589)            (731)

  8    5  +105  Angie Winkler       565   +35    600

  9    5   +79   Eileen Mills          768    +8     776

 10   5   - 49  Mohammed Hegazi 943   -24    919

 11    5  -115 Ann Goodwin         792    -9      783

 12    5  -134  Gianna Devcic       906   -17     889

 13    4  +290 Irlande Alfred        971   -58     913

 14    4   +67  Marisa Nuccitelli 770   -27     743

 15  3.5  -257 Judith Westwood 762   -29     733

 16    3  -444 Mary Mackie         594   -12     582

 17  2.5 -402 Balada Catanchin   632   -31     601

 18    0  -787 *Trudy Kennedy                       ( 500)

 

Version 2 of results accepted and recorded as final

Rank	Player	Wins	Margin	Rating change
1	Gillian Renwick	9	670	974	+5	1030
2	Elize Plaganyi	8	303	803	+6	870
3	Norma Engel	7	320	911	+2	935
4	Lina Camilleri	6	362	802	+2	822
5	Eileen Mills	6	109	768	+2	796
6	Gayle Cameron	6	95	810	+1	820
7	Carole Eden	6	-11	874	+1	886
8	Brian Rowe	6	-92	589	)	731
9	Angie Winkler	5	105	565	+3	600
10	Ann Goodwin	5	-115	792	-	783
11	Gianna Devcic	5	-134	906	-1	889
12	Irlande Alfred	4	290	971	-5	913
13	Marisa Nuccitelli	4	67	770	-2	743
14	Mohammed Hegazi	4	-79	943	-4	899
15	Judith Westwood	3.5	-257	762	-2	733
16	Mary Mackie	3	-444	594	-1	583
17	Balada Catanchin	2.5	-402	632	-3	601
18	Trudy Kennedy	0	-787			500

 

Final accepted results of Lina Camilleri

Round	Opponent			Scores		Margin	Wins	Cum. Margin
1	594	Mary Mackie	[H][S]	394	264	130	1	130
2	810	Gayle Cameron	[H][S]	380	295	85	2	215
3	974	Gillian Renwick	[H][S]	326	385	-59	2	156
4	565	Angie Winkler	[H][S]	423	294	129	3	285
5	803	Elize Plaganyi	[H][S]	295	367	-72	3	213
6	768	Eileen Mills	[H][S]	316	324	-8	3	205
7	911	Norma Engel	[H][S]	270	320	-50	3	155
8	762	Judith Westwood	[H][S]	407	329	78	4	233
9	906	Gianna Devcic	[H][S]	367	344	23	5	256
10	943	Mohammed Hegazi	[H][S]	382	276	106	6	362

Final accepted results of Eileen Mills

Round	Opponent			Scores		Margin	Wins	Cum. Margin
1	906	Gianna Devcic	[H][S]	343	387	-44	0	-44
2	762	Judith Westwood	[H][S]	394	332	62	1	18
3	770	Marisa Nuccitelli	[H][S]	378	335	43	2	61
4	810	Gayle Cameron	[H][S]	405	298	107	3	168
5	974	Gillian Renwick	[H][S]	338	421	-83	3	85
6	802	Lina Camilleri	[H][S]	324	316	8	4	93
7	803	Elize Plaganyi	[H][S]	278	356	-78	4	15
8	874	Carole Eden	[H][S]	366	397	-31	4	-16
9	943	Mohammed Hegazi	[H][S]	336	321	15	5	-1
10		Trudy Kennedy	[H][S]	381	271	110	6	109

 

Final accepted results of Mohammed Hegazi

Round	Opponent			Scores		Margin	Wins	Cum. Margin
1	792	Ann Goodwin	[H][S]	410	387	23	1	23
2	770	Marisa Nuccitelli	[H][S]	340	296	44	2	67
3	803	Elize Plaganyi	[H][S]	317	381	-64	2	3
4	589	Brian Rowe	[H][S]	321	291	30	3	33
5	874	Carole Eden	[H][S]	289	330	-41	3	-8
6	565	Angie Winkler	[H][S]	417	293	124	4	116
7	974	Gillian Renwick	[H][S]	353	399	-46	4	70
8	911	Norma Engel	[H][S]	358	386	-28	4	42
9	768	Eileen Mills	[H][S]	321	336	-15	4	27
10	802	Lina Camilleri	[H][S]	276	382	-106	4	-79