mrdct

This is quite different as dummy isn't passing any potential UI to declarer (unless he's had a quick peek at the opponent's cards and spotted a bad trump break that needs to be handled with care or something like that). However, strictly applying the Laws dummy has no right to provide such advice to declarer so this would be an infraction. But so too is saying "good luck partner" as you put dummy down, and I think anyone who calls the director on a dummy saying "good luck partner" would be well on his way to the a***hole hall of fame.

Where, pray tell, in the Laws is a time limitation placed on when dummy is allowed to attempt to prevent an irregularity by declarer? As blackshoe already stated, we are only talking about a couple of seconds between the "oops" and the "wait a minute, partner has lead options here" and we were at the completion of the almost-revoke trick. This would strike me as the optimal time for dummy to take action. Dummy is entirely within her rights to try to prevent declarer perpetrating the irregularity of not calling the director and I see nothing wrong with dummy expressing the reasons why she is seeking to have that irregularity avoided; particularly given that she given no indication of whether or not she believes lead penalties ought to be applied or which lead penalities ought to be applied (which would of course be illegal).

"Suspect", is it? If you want to call me a cheat, come out and say it. :) One the evidence at hand I certainly wouldn't say (and didn't say) you cheated. Deliberately not calling the director when attention has been drawn to an irregularity is cheating when it is motivated by an attempt to gain an advantage through the potential avoidance of further penalties. I'm sure in this case your motivation was to keep the game moving and to avoid the disruption and acrimony of a director call, but the potential perception remains that you could have had other motives which makes it a pretty naiive thing to do, especially from an experienced TD. An actively ethical player is careful to both behave ethically and avoid situations where their behaviour could be perceived as unethical.

You earlier opined that "quoting laws to the table is not only illegal it is a lot worse than playing on with a penalty card" but are you now saying that this act is merely "arrogant, rude and unhelpful"? It seems to me that dummy was simply trying to prevent the irregularity of the players failing to call the TD when required to do so. The obiter dictum of "partner has lead options here" to my mind is a helpful comment as it provides a rationalisation for why she is stepping in to try to prevent the irregularity. I think the behaviour of declarer's LHO is quite suspect, particularly from an experienced director who ought to know that at very least his actions could be perceived as trying to take advantage of his superior knowledge of the laws to avoid his partner having to incur lead penalties.

Funnily enough, there is no Law requiring this. How about Law 9B1(a)" The Director should be summoned at once when attention is drawn to an irregularity". That needs attention to be drawn. If it is not, then there is no Law requirung a TD call. Wouldn't the act itself of the revoke card being substituted with a legal card constitute "attention drawn to an irregularity" and therefore trigger the law requiring the TD call? Of course the failure to call the TD when required by Law 9B1(a) becomes a further irregularity.

Funnily enough, there is no Law requiring this. How about Law 9B1(a)" The Director should be summoned at once when attention is drawn to an irregularity".

Is there a Law that says that? Law 42B2 gives dummy qualified rights to "try to prevent any irregularity by declarer". Law 9B2 states, "No player shall take any action until the Director has explained all matters in regard to rectification". Accordingly, dummy is within his rights to try to stop his partner from playing-on until the director has outlined all of the nuances created by the penalty card. Quoting laws could quite reasonably form part of dummy's strategy to try to prevent his partner from perpetrating an irregularity.

Hers's another good analogous situation that one often sees with some pro/client or expert/non-expert partnerships: In the defence, after everyone has turned their trick over except for himself, the pro/expert casually asks "can I just see those pips again please" to highlight for partner that an important pip has just revealled itself somewhere; perhaps a critical count card, a developing a tenace situation or a more sinister "have a good look at my pip because this is a suit preference situation".

This situation reminds me of the infamous German concession versus England in the semi-final of the 2008 World Mind Sports Games in the middle of segment after going for for 1100, 1400 and 1400 on consecutive boards. At the time, without all of the facts, I was right in there with lynch mob ready to tar and feather the "offending" players. It turned out that the players politely asked the Chief Tournament Director if it would be possible to end the match, the CTD said OK but the German captain has to agree, the German captain couldn't be located, one of the German players became physically unwell and after a few minutes the CTD agreed to stop the match. The lesson learned is that these sorts of threads are completely pointless when not armed with the full facts. We have no idea what external issues/factors may have affected the decision to concede and may never know to the extent to which those reasons may be personal.

I would suggest that it would be highly unethical and quite close to cheating to do this as you are purposefully generating unauthorised information for your partner. Moreover, it would be a clear breach of Law 73A1 "Communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of calls and plays". Refer also to Law 73D1 "Variations in Tempo or Manner. It is desirable, though not always required, for players to maintain steady tempo and unvarying manner. However, players should be particularly careful when variations may work to the benefit of their side. Otherwise, unintentionally to vary the tempo or manner in which a call or play is made is not in itself an infraction. Inferences from such variation may appropriately be drawn only by an opponent, and at his own risk". To help keep a clear conscience in such situations, perhaps a more defensible approach would be to have a good think about the order in which you perform your part of the cash out to maximise partner's chances of getting the gag and then it's up to your partner's ethics to decide whether he's acting on your hesitation or acting on the sequence in which you have played your cards. Having said all that, I think it would be virtually impossible for your opponents to successfully argue damage but you would certainly develop a reputation that you wouldn't necessarily be proud of. An analagous situation is often seen in pro/client or expert/non-expert partnerships where the expert or pro asks questions about the auction for which they very well know the answers through familarity with their opponents methods with the sole purpose of drawing their less-experienced partner's attention to the nuances of the auction that they might not otherwise pick-up on if they don't ask the right questions. Highly dodgey in my books.

I doubt the windows client would be playable on the small screen without at least two undos per trick. I tried it using VNC to a PC running the window client and it was OK to kibitz but impossible to play.

Whichever way /test1 was set up a week or two ago worked fine and seemed to do exactly what you describe (showing the top 10 or so tables by numbers of kibitzers). I'm not sure what you mean by "I'm guessing that almost no one would care". In my small circle of iPhone-packing bridge-playing Australian friends, I know several people who regularly kibitz from their iPhone so surely this would extrapolate to a reasonable number of people worldwide.

Up until a few days ago the url www.bridgebase.com/test1/ would present a list of about 10 tables to kibitz with the vugraph matches shaded yellow. The available tables seemed to be based on kibitzer numbers so the Cayne matches were invariably available at the relevant time of day. Checking on my iPhone now, I get a "No tables found" message even though through the windows client I can see that the "51st Winter National Holkars Trophy - Final" is on vugraph right now. I tried both /test1 and /mobile.

There is a lot more to bridge than intelligence. Intelligence certainly helps and without it you probably won't get very far in the sport, but in my experience the more intangible "card sense" is the factor that takes players to that higher echelon. I've got no idea where one gets "card sense" from, but I think it's quite likely that genetics has something to do with it, so if the Y chromosome happens to be involved; hey presto there is a potential rational basis for gender-based segregation of our sport.

The quality of toilet facilities has nothing to do with the quality/level of bridge or the playing level in a bridge event. I understand your frustration bit lets still try to be real... :) Of course it does not. Nor does the presence or absence of a Law book: my point exactly. Not that it has any bearing on how I rule on this hand, but poor facilities and ill-prepared directing staff would most definately have an impact on the quality/level of bridge being played.

Out of interest what was your actual decision on the hand?

"high level event" where the neither the director nor the venue has a rule book? Do you have iPhones in the UK? I've got the Laws of Bridge bookmarked on mine. The fact that the venue and TD may be incompetent in their provision of the Law book, while hardly relevant to the problem I gave, does not affect how high level an event is. Some venues have poor toilet facilities: does that affect the level of the events held there? I have presented a problem. If you think that you should change the basis of the problem to pretending it was a friendly club Xmas evening because they did not have a Law book, fine, but it seems a strange approach to me. Why not just treat the event as it was? After all, I was trying to point out the basis on which I gave a decision: I was not there as a TD, but a player. When I am there as a TD I always carry my own Law book, and do not rely on the venue. As for iPhones, yes, some people have them, no, not everyone has them. I am quite sure the same applies where you are. Of course, if I have misunderstood you, and your comment has nothing to do with the thread, but it is a complaint against the organisers and TD, fine, but perhaps you could address it to them not this forum. But it sounded to me as though you did not believe it was a high-level event because of the lack of a Law book. A very strange view, and since it suggests I am telling porkies, not one that I like. I think you have misunderstood me. I gave my "ruling" on the hand earlier in the thread without any reference to the quality of the event, venue or directing staff. I was merely responding to assertions that you raised including the implication that one can run a "high level event" without a rule book. I also took the opportunity, without necessarily wanting to plug Apple too hard, that with any web-enabled mobile phone you can have the Laws of Bridge up on your screen in seconds which might be a good learning point for TDs who find themselves in this situation.

"high level event" where the neither the director nor the venue has a rule book? Do you have iPhones in the UK? I've got the Laws of Bridge bookmarked on mine. Failing to cash a winner in a two card ending could be an expert play or could be a beginner play; who knows which is more likely?

There's a few things going on here: - Dummy's illegal outburst should, imho, be subject to a procedural penalty or at the very least a stern warning. - Assuming this is matchpoints, if LHO held a winner and small ♠, it's not unreasonable to consider that she might be playing a singleton ♠ in the hope of beating it by 2 tricks, so declarer's belated analysis that "if LHO had a non-spade she would have cashed it" is far from water-tight. Indeed, one might even consider a low ♠ the expert defence as a neat double psychology ploy against a declarer who is presumed to believe that LHO would always cash a winner at trick 12. Moreover, EW are "inexperienced" so who knows what they might do. - The fact that declarer has admitted that he can't remember if RHO has shown-out of ♠ suggests to me that he isn't quite playing to his "top class" ability on this hand, so I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to EW and giving them one more trick.

It's a bit different in Australia Nick where we don't have any events which are restricted to people with a minimum number of masterpoints. I've never played in a NABC, but from looking at the bulletins and programmes they appear to be dominated by flighted events which is obviously a popular format given the number of tables they have in play. Restricting the "premium" events to the deep end of the talent pool is probably better for the development of the top players who get to spend more time playing in a higher standard field. It also makes good sense for the ACBL to incentivise people to accumulate masterpoints to gain entry to the premium events for obvious revenue reasons. Contrast the NABC format to our own Summer Festival of Bridge where for the premier teams event, which is open to all-comers and is the only event on from Monday to Friday of the second week, you have the noobs and the experts all in one field such that even the top teams will probably play at least six matches (two full days of bridge) against monumentally weaker opponents which probably isn't the best use of their time.

I'd settle for opponents who at least wait until the end of a hand before they leave.

In both cases the 10 by LHO is akin to restricted choice so I guess I'll play RHO for the J.

In a nutshell, yes. The only way EW will score one of the remaining two tricks is if the TD and/or appeals committee determine that in the absence of the claim it would be careless, but not irrational, for declarer to pitch a loser as the last play at trick 12 so that his trick 13 claim will be with the high trump. I agree that the vast majority of competent players would indeed ruff the ♦10 and put their "losing" ♣8 on the table on the off chance that they've missed a discard or weren't following the pips properly. To not take that precautionary line in the two-card ending would certainly be careless, but you couldn't call it irrational to be conceding a known losing trick. The test here is not what you or I or any other competent player would do. Nor is the test what we think this particularly person would do. The test is would it be careless but not irrational to save the trump for trick 13 when you are in a mindset of believing that your other card is a guaranteed loser. It's distorting the facts somewhat, but when a person truly believes they have an unavoidable loser they could just have easily made a claim statement such as: "all I've got is the top trump, so one for you and one for me"; or "my club is a loser, so I'll just take my top trump at the end". When people have lost track of the pips and don't know what's high or, as in this case, firmly believe that a winner is actually a loser, they have been known to do careless things in the end-game. We have all observed careless plays in end-positions based on misapprehensions of what's high or not and I dare say that very few of us would be entirely innocent of not making such careless plays at some point of our careers.

I recon that if south is careless enough to not realise that his ♣8 is high, he will be careless enough to pitch it on the ♦10 at trick 12 and only win the last trick with his trump. Poor technique? Yes. No-win play? Yes. Careless? Yes. Irrational? No. Referring to askoxford.com: In this case, pitching his "known" losing ♣8 and then taking the last trick with the master trump certainly lacks attention and thought to avoiding harm or mistakes, but you couldn't say it's not logical or reasonable as if the player truly believes that the ♣8 is a loser, there is logic and reason to not seeking to find a line to win a trick with it. As a previous poster has noted, it is not unusual to see players (particularly in lower-standard competitions) try to develop an end position where one hand is high before claiming to avoid prolonged analysis of what's getting pitched on what and how communication will be managed, etc.

I think the statement by one defender of "you are in your hand" could just as easily translate to, "partner, if you think it might be to our side's advantage to accept this lead from the wrong hand, say so now, otherwise shut up and let me decide whether or not to accept it".