mrdct

That's not quite true. There is actually quite a lot of evidence in support of both sides of the argument. I'm sure others can add to this, but I would sum up as follows: Evidence supporting the theory that UI was used: 1. The 6♦ bid itself having so little bridge merit that it could only have been made by a player of this calibre if informed by UI. 2. The player in question has a track record of conduct and ethics issues. 3. Opportunity existed to acquire UI due to the archaic practice of hand dealing with that opportunity possibly enhanced due to the player only dealing one of the 8 boards at his table. Evidence supporting the theory that UI was not used: 1. On reasonable simulations it turns out that the disparity in odds of success between 6♦ and other more logical alternative actions is not as profound as one might think prima facie. 2. The player in question has a track record of taking unilateral actions, particularly in pro-client partnerships. 3. The player in question has a track record of making creative and unusual bids which may not occur to many players. 4. The player in question has formally denied any wroing doing and provided an at least partially plausible rationalisation for the 6♦ bid. 5. The player in question did not deal the board in question. 6. The boards were dealt with all four players present greatly reducing the chances of any irregularity. 7. The conduct and ethics track record of the player in question pertains mostly to behavioural matters and not cheating per se.

Actually it was Australian superstar Peter Gill, who is in fact a bona fide genius.

This is not at all an "innocent explanation". If you have a "complicated" signalling system where the meaning of a discard depends heavily on previous discard(s) then it is your responsibility to notice and remember all previous (relevant) discards so that you will be able to give correct explanations if asked. I meant innocent in that he can avoid the lifetime ban from bridge and 28 page BBO thread flaming his poor ethics. He will not escape a penalty (be that procedural, adjustment or both) for the misexplanation. I wish I was a good enough bridge player to never miss a pip from partner and be able to read the 2nd card played in a suit 100% of the time with 100% accuracy. The reality is that all bridge players of all standards will miss a pip from time to time, particularly in circumstances where you determine the moment that dummy goes down that partner's hand is irrelevant and the outcome is going to depend solely on declarer guessing everything correctly. On this hand, it is quite unlikely that any carding from west is going to be of any assistance to him so he could well have just tuned-out and not realised that the ♠5 had already gone.

This is an interesting thought. Just knowing that partner has the ♦K bumps up the chance that partner has 4+ diamonds from under 50% to over 60%. What are the respective success rates for 6♣ and 6♦ now?

Does "strongly suspect" mean you think it is a greater than 50% chance? I admit that this is somewhat of a strawman arguement, but if so you seem to be advocating a change in the laws to require a higher standard of proof that "balance of probabilities" to award an adjustment for apparent use of unauthorised information.

The manner in which dislcosure of carding agreements in made is generally a matter for local regulating authorities. In most places of the world where I've played you can ask what your opponents' carding agreements are, you can ask about style and priorities for 1st and subsequent discards and you can ask about style and priorities for suits led and/or bid by either side; but asking what a specific card means is highly inappropriate imho as it is often dependent on cards that have already gone by and/or what the person answering the question has in his own hand and could place a defender in an awkward situation where a card from partner might indicate a card that he is actually looking at in his own hand.

Was west familiar with the north-south methods (i.e. had he perused their convention card)? Ordinarily I wouldn't think west has any business asking about a non-alerted 2♥ overcall which is presumed to be natural. I guess he might have a hand considering introducing his ♠ suit if he has a small doubleton ♥ and good ♣ support and might want to rule-out a two-suiter on his left by asking whether or not NS have other bids available to show two-suiters. If west knows that 2♥ shows a two-suiter his correct action is to call the TD, not ask what a non-alerted bid is. The correct way to draw attention to the irregularity is to pick-up the NS convention card and say "your convention card says you play multi-landy so shouldn't 2♥ have been alerted? .... I think I better call the director ... director please!".

I'm not sure of the alerting regulations in ACBL-land, but in Australia you would be required to pre-alert an unusual defensive carding method like this, so we might even be able to give EW a PP for failure to pre-alert. The answer to the question ought to have been: "We generally play our first discard as blah blah and subsequent carding is either blah or blah depending on blah". If there is a follow-up question of "what does the ♠2 show?" the answer should be: "That depends on what other cards he has in his hand and what his earlier carding may have been. If it's his first discard it indicates blah blah and if it's a subsequent discard it's either blah or blah depending on blah". There is a potentially innocent explanation for east's apparent cheating by lying about the meaning of the ♠2 discard. East himself may not have been paying full attention and wasn't aware that there had already been a discard of the ♠5. The fact that declarer quized him on the ♠2 and not the ♠5 may have confused east into thinking that the ♠2 was the first discard. This explantion won't get him off the hook for the misexplanation though. Particularly at non-elite levels, this is a very frequent occurence (that is defenders not remembering what partner has pitched).

Adjustment to 3NT+2 and throw the book at RHO for clearly being a cheat in every sense of the word. Having said that, "what does that mean?" is a pretty inappropriate question to be asking and I have a modicum of sympathy for the director coming down hard on you for querying the carding methods in that manner.

At trick one we should all have a think about the whole hand and then turn our attention to trick one problem. I promise you, your defence will improve significantly if you adopt this strategy on 100% of the hands you defend - especially the ones where you think you don't have a problem at trick one.

It may depend on the bidding box regulations in your jursidiction, some of which are extremely harsh and some of which are extremely lenient. 18 months ago in Australia west would've been able to have been change his bid as back then a bid or call using bidding boxes needed to be be made with intent, but the regulations have since been changed to be similar to the rules for played cards; i.e held on or near the table, etc. Where are you?

I just ran that simulation versus 6-7 ♠, 2-3 ♠ honours and less than 10hcp and 7♥ only makes 38.64% of the time.

In defence never play to trick one until at least 20 seconds after dummy is put down. I always have something to think about as the first thing I always try to do when dummy comes down is develop a picture of the shapes of partner and declarer which I do before I start to think about what signal to give or whether to play high or low etc. I'm not that fast with arithmetic so it usually takes me at least 10 seconds to get the shape possibiities narrowed down and then I start thinking about my card for this trick. So: - In all cases when declarer plays instantly to trick one, I fold my cards, query the auction, tell everyone I'm thinking, pick up my hand and find a card to play. Being consistent avoids passing UI.

This software is awesome. It is highly cool that you just enter your BBO name in the settings and it will rip your hands from the BBO site automatically. A really cool feature is that you can get it to calculate the par score on each board which would be quite useful in setting up a par-bridge competition. It might be a symptom of prefering what I'm used to, but when I go through my (many) misplayed hands it would be nice if it highlighted the successful and unsuccessful cards similar to the way GIB does it in BBO. For those not proficient with the use of google, the download page is here.

What Law says that? If you are taking me for what I obviously meant and using the slightest modicum of common sense, 70D2. If you are taking me completely literally at the expense of having an actual conversation that doesn't diverge into absurdity, none. The Laws allow you to claim for your partner, but you do so at great peril as Law 70D2 will operate to force your partner to do something sub-optimal if such a play can be selected from alternative "normal" plays. The moral of the story is that it is highly non-advisable, but not illegal, to make a claim for your partner unless you are absolutely sure that nothing can possibly go wrong. In defence, the only time I ever claim is when partner's remaining actions can have no bearing on the outcome.

I think that's really harsh, particularly the general penalty for not being the best player in the room which doesn't really have any foundation in Law. I'm not sure why everyone is suggesting procedural penalties at all for either south or east. East appears to be making an honest attempt to expedite matters given that the move has already been called and south is simply exercising his basic rights to contest a potentially dodgey claim. 99% of the time it's a simple matter of having a quite word to east telling him to pull his head in a bit and similarly have a word to south asking him to be a bit more mindful of time and (if appropriate to the skill level of the parties concerned) to be a bit more accepting of obvious defensive claims. In the meantime you need to make a ruling about whether or not you are going to give EW another trick which can really only be done by the director on the floor who is in a position to determine whether or not east's statement was a claim and whether or not it was at all feasible having regard to all the circumstances for west to pitch a ♣.

That does beg the question of how the director(s) managed to fulfil their responsibilities under Law 85 without speaking with the guy who held xx xxx Kxxx xxxx.

In addition to the very high standard of operating in terms of following play to completion and obtaining descriptions of alerted bids, the extent of commentary on the non-bridge action by the operators (such as the fly waving) was superb at the Spingold. I quite like webcams to complement the vugraph, but in practice I might only glance at it once or twice during a session due to my very limited screen space. For events coming from places with abundant bandwidth, I think streaming video and audio from the playing room would be superb and it's well worth looking into, perhaps as a pay-per-view service. If it was available I'd be happy to pay for it and would invest in a bigger monitor.

I've got a passed hand on my right and an opponent on my left who couldn't act over 1NT at favourable vul even though he had a few gadgets at his disposal. My opponents appear to have found a major fit at the two level, I'm playing matchpoints, I have an undisclosed 6-card suit, my partner hasn't sought to remove 1NT to his 5-card suit and my side seems to have about half the points. I don't think there is any logical alternative to bidding 3♣.

I used the Cavendish conditions as an example to refute your assertion that "very few regulating authorities mandate this first trick pause" and also to confirm Fred's representation as to the standard custom and practice in the "high-level circles in the USA". True, but the existence of such recommendations would surely offer some protection to a defender who tanked after an instant play by declarer at trick one. I think it's an inference that can be reasonably drawn. Notwithstanding any local regulations made under Law 73, a fast play from dummy at trick one would by any reasonable person's assessment fall within the definition of "undue haste" and is therefore an infraction under the Laws.

I was aware only that no director appeared at my table. It seems likely that a director(s) were consulted by the Lall team regarding this hand between the end of the second quarter and the start of the third quarter. Just so we are clear on this, did the director(s) speak to anyone from your team to ascertain the facts before they ruled that the table result stands?

Yep - 100% agree. It's a bit of a stretch, but you could even go a step further and say you were acting inappropriately as the conditions of contest espoused by many Regulating Authorities require you to do your best on every board and not deliberately go down in a contract that you know you can make. It's a little bit like people who don't exploit penalty card situations to maximum advantage because they "don't want to win that way", but I would counter that they are not being fair to the field or their teammates.

Cavendish Conditions of Contest: I think it's quite reasonable to take inference from this that in events with similar conditions of contest, a defender is free to tank for 10 seconds at trick one without fear of passing UI to partner and if a declarer fails to take his 15 seconds before playing from dummy, he would have limited scope to claim damage if RHO took no more than the balance of 25 seconds from when dummy hit the table.

That would be cheating, explicitly contemplated by Law 73D2: And the footnote to Law 74C5:

Who says? Its not in the laws. Try Law 73A (my emphasis added): A counter-defence that I usually employ when declarer calls for a card the instant dummy goes down is to fold my own hand, ask a few questions about the auction and inform everyone that I'm just thinking about the whole hand and then after a few moments pick up my hand and decide what to do. Playing with screens, particularly if you are on the South-West side as Fred was in this case, closing the screen aperture while you think is a technique that can also be used. btw, well done to the Diamond team! Boards in the dying stages are invariably the most memorable, but how good (albeit slow) was Brad Moss' double of 3♠ on the penultimate board?