mrdct

The issue of security with online broadcasts came up at a recent meeting of the Australian Bridge Federation Tournament Committee, the minutes for which are located here. The relevant extract is quoted below: I am particularly encouraged by the last sentence which hasn't always been the view of Australian bridge administrators and, no doubt, in some other bridge jurisdictions also.

I'm not as alarmist as some with regards to the high average age of bridge players which is often reported as 69 for the ACBL and I wouldn't expect it to be much lower than that in Australia. On my anecdotal observations, a lot of people don't take up the game (or don't start playing with any regularity) until they reach retirement age or have got a lot of other significant lifetime milestones of family and career behind them. With life expectancy increasing and retirement age decreasing there is always going to be a substantial population of oldies to take up the game, pay membership dues, pay table fees, buy bridge books and play in tournaments or online. I'm all in favour of geting younger people into the game, but the bread and butter for the survival of game will continue to be the older demographic who have the time, money and social reasons to play bridge. The apparent fact the the average age of the bridge population is increasing does not mean the game is dying.

I'm sure Martin Andresen must be wondering what he did in previous life to deserve all this: professional football career; captain of his national team; stunning good looks; good at bridge; and heir to the Norwegian furniture manufacturer Skeidar. He sounds like a really nice bloke too!

If I was EW, I would be focussing on North's actions for potential redress. NS must surely have some ascribed meaning for a 3♣ bid after 2♣:2♦:2NT or 2♦:2♥:2NT and if North has by-passed a normal response to 3♣ of 3♦, 3♥ or 3♠ I think NS might be in trouble. Say, for example, North bids 3♦ over 3♣ South will now have to devine which misbid or engineering exercise North has perpetrated. The error could be that North thought 2NT was a preempt in either minor, or perhaps North is irrationally deciding to introduce a side suit. Now pass or 3NT become potential logical alternatives for South. Given North's inappropriate verbal announcement to the table that she misbid, I am inclined to give EW a fair chuck of the benefit of the doubt and probably come down hard on NS if North happened to have a 4-card Major that she has failed to show with either 3♦ if they play puppet stayman in the comparable sequence or 3M if they play normal stayman. I think opposite a non-3NT response to 3♣ South must surely have 3NT as a logical alternative as it is quite plausible that either North has a ♦ pre-empt or a 7-4 that she's decided to upgrade.

Situation A (as has occurred at the table) is a case of South not properly alerting the 1st Dbl. Any damage that has resulted for NS is their own fault so no adjustment. As an aside, when I play with screens I am quite an overt alerter. For partner's bids I usually vigourously point at the artificial call and simulataneously make eye-contact with my screenmate to make sure he's seen the alert. For my own bids I usually hold my bid above the tray and wave it about to attract my screenmate's attention before placing it on the tray and pointing at it just to be sure. By a rough estimate of the number of tournaments that I've played with screens over the years, I'm sure that I've played well over a thousand hands with screens and I've never had a "failed to notice an alert" situation arise. Situation B is West giving an incorrect explanation of the 2♦ bid which appears to have resulted in damage to NS as if South had been correctly informed that East has ♦ and has not shown ♥ support, she would be unlikely to bid over 4♥x. I tend to agree with mink's proposed adjustment to 4♥x-2, although if we are in a jurisdiction where weighted rulings can be given I might be inclined to give a modest percentage to 4♥x-1 as 9 tricks are easy on a non-trump lead which might occur and even on a trump lead NS could get it wrong and not find a way to South's hand for a 2nd round of trumps.

I tried that but it doesn't seem to engage in conversation. Is there a special syntax one needs to use?

I don't know 2/1 and I'm not inclined to learn it so I'm interested to know if it's possible to get GIB to play SAYC.

It is both rude and a breach of Law 74B1: LAW 74 - CONDUCT AND ETIQUETTE B. Etiquette As a matter of courtesy a player should refrain from: 1. paying insufficient attention to the game.

Can you present the actual hand that we are talking about so we can see what additional information the preempter had? In isolation I don't think a 3♥ opening with 3 hcp is necessarily unusual. These players sound to me like the sort of people that wouldn't really remember a hand from 10 minutes ago anyway, particularly if they only saw it briefly. If it was something like a pre-empt on K1098xxx where the opener knows that xxx is offside, I would be a little bit suspicious but I'd look the prempter in the eye and ask him directly if he based his bid on his knowledge of what one of his opponent's hands were and if he denied it and represented that this is normal action for him, I would be inclined to believe him. Notwithstanding the foregoing, all four players will be getting a stern warning about not calling the director when an irregularity occurs.

It is not necessary to establish that 4♣ was conventional, the laws only require that the insufficient may be conventional. Strengthening this point, Law 27 also says in relation to insufficient bids that can be made sufficient without penalty as being limited to "incontrovertibly not conventional". By definition, the offending pair will not have any agreements about what their insufficient bids mean so it's up to the director to determine whether or not there is any possibility that a conventional meaning could attach to the 4♣ bid. In this case, on the limited information presented, it seems pretty clear to me that 4♣ is not "incontrovertibly not conventional".

I would've thought 3♠ agreed ♠ and 4♦ was a cue-bid which would tend to indicate that 4♣ was intended as a cue-bid; but like a lot of these problems it would be useful if all of the facts could be presented upfront by the initial poster. As 4♣ may have a conventional meaning, South is to be informed that he has the option to accept the insufficient bid but if he doesn't East will be required to make a sufficient call after which his partner will be barred from the rest of the auction and there may be lead penalties against West if NS wind up declaring the contract. A pet peeve of mine is directors who simply ask the non-offender if they want to accept the insufficient bid without explaining to them the full ramifications of not accepting an insufficient bid that may be conventional.

There isn't much point posing these sort of ruling question without complete information - the key piece of the puzzle being what was the actual NS agreement in relation to the 2♠ bid? I would assume that if they are playing this 3-way 2♥ bid they would have some system notes to clarify the matter. Did East ask North what 2♠ was? If so, how was it described on the other side of the screen? What alternative actions is West suggesting she might have taken had 2♠ been described as a relay? I think it's unlikely that she'd be competing to 4♠ when it looks like 4♥ is going to struggle. Also, if she thinks she has penalty double with LHO holding an opening hand with ♦ & ♠ and RHO holding ♥AKQxxx and 13+ hcp, then how does changing 2♠ to a "relay" reduce the atrractiveness of double? On the surface, I think West's poor result is self-inflicted (possibly under the mistaken belief that she had a safety net of being able to seek an adjusted score if 4♥x makes) but I'm not going to rule until I establish the facts.

Are we in a jurisdiction where bids above 3NT are non-alertable? If not, did west alert 4♥ and, if so, how was 4♥ described? As several posters have noted, it's critical to know what style of cue bidding EW employ.

That's not quite what happened - the players were filling in result slips and the TD/ Scorer was inputting them into his computer so we could have live official scoring on the internet result site. He noticed a discrepency between his scores and the BBO score. Even more reason why it's important for BBO operators to enter the actual agreed result not the result that the operator believes to be correct. Had you entered the agreed result the director probably would never had noticed unless he happened to be watching BBO at the time (which in my experience directors are often doing btw).

When operating you should always enter the claim as agreed by the players not as per the actual play of the hand. If necessary you may even need to do a few undos to roll back to point where a claim of -1 is possible.

Under all of the screen regulations I've ever played under it is solely the responsibility of north-south to look after the bidding tray and ensure that it correctly passes under the screen with a complete record of the auction thus far. Accordingly, I'm going to treat NS as the offending side here in that south didn't pass the tray through properly and north didn't check the completeness of the auction by reference to the board which I presume was on the tray. Auction proceeds as if it had gone 1♦:pass:pass:1♥ with the fact the north and east based their bids on an apparent misapprehension that west was dealer being authorised info for west but unauthorised info for south who needs to proceed in the auction on the assumption that his partner couldn't find a response to 1♦. If at some point it becomes clear by authorised means that north has something else, such as by bidding 2♥ this round for example, then I think south can then legitimately play north for some values.

I don't get it. Why does a slow ace deny the queen lol? The ace tends to deny the queen, but if they played a slow ace I would think they would be more likely to have AQ. Why does someone have to play a fast ACE with AQ?! I could see the case that a slow queen is unethical, but a slow ace? Jeez, he is falsecarding and making a highly unusual deceptive play. And he's doing it slowly! Seems pretty normal. My main point is that defenders can avoid being put in this situation by planning their defence at trick one so they can make these sort of deceptive plays in tempo. Generally speaking (there are obvious exceptions such as this one) a holding of AQx sitting over KJT is an automatic play of the cheapest honour to win the trick. I would be surprised if on defences with 100 random deals with AQx sitting over KJT there was potential gain in deceptively taking the J with A more than one in a hundred times. Accordingly, declarer is entitled to assume that a holding of AQx will play in tempo in this position; so when the defender tanks and then wins A, this is really only consistent with A to some number of pips. Playing out of tempo is an infraction that has a propensity to create UI for partner and to inappropriately mislead declarer, hence declarer is imho the non-offender who has innocently and reasonably drawn an inference from the defender's slow play of the A that he doesn't hold the Q.

You really should've thought this through when dummy came down rather than waiting until declarer actually plays on the suit. Whilst you had a legitimate problem to think about, you should've known that a long tank before playing the Ace could have the propensity to mislead declarer into thinking that you could not hold the Queen given the usual effectiveness of lulling declarer into thinking a finesse is working requires the play to be in tempo. I'm inclinded to rule in favour of the non-offending side, but I think a warning is a bit harsh as I don't think you've done anything unethical - just poor technique in not deciding what to do with your your AQ a trick or two beforehand.

I wonder what the Orange Book writers had in mind with the term "reasonable frequency"? On the surface 0.37% (apparently Richard P's calculation of the frequency of a 22-24 balanced hand) would appear to be outside the realms of "reasonable frequency". But assuming their 2♦ opening is considered a legal opening bid ( particularly as 11G6 seems to have been purposefully written to allow people to play 2♦ as weak either major or strong balanced given the widespread popularity of the method prior to the introduction of system restrictions) I would've thought application of 11G6(b)(vi) "It is only permitted to pass a Multi 2♦ if responder has good reason to believe that 2♦ is the partnership’s best contract" means case closed - responder clearly had good reason to believe the 2♦ is the partnership's best contract so is explicitly permitted to pass. Further, a semantic point, 11G6(b)(v) uses the term "is expected to" not "must" or "shall" - this choice of words could only have the intent of not making it mandatory to explore game.

I'm with Justin on this one. If declarer believes dummy is high it would not be illogical to play ♦J before the ♦A. I sometimes play equal honours from the bottom myself; particularly if dummy has gone for a smoke as it's not as far to reach. The fact that ♦Kxx are missing means that declared must believe in his mind the the A & J are equal. If it had only been stiff ♦K missing, then obviously declarer's intent would be to play ♦A first.

You are going to kick a vugraph operator out of the room because they won't tell the director whether or not there was a discernable hesitation? This has to be one of the most ridiculous posts I've ever seen - and from a moderator of this forum no less! Remind me not to do vugraph operating for any event that you are directing. You should probably be reported to the Vugraph Operators Union so a formal ban on vugraph can be place on your events.

I was the vugraph operator in this case and was uncomfortable giving evidence about a potential hesitation as I had a perceived conflict of interest with one of the players and I'm of the opinion that vugraph operators have so many balls in the air at once that it's highly likely that my perception of how long a hesitation was would not be accurate. My planned approach if asked by a TD about a hesitation in future will be to say, "I'm sorry, but I was busy double-checking the scores from the other table during the auction and wasn't really paying attention to the tempo."

Addressing your first point, it is somewhat unavoidable to have to compare Olympiad and Bermuda Bowl results given that for at least the last 20 years Australia has used teams trials to select 100% of its Bermuda Bowl teams and has used pairs trials for most, but not all, Olympiad Teams. Pairs trials are also used to select our team for the PABF Championships (East Asia & South Pacific) in non-Bowl years, but I haven't included them in the data as I don't think the field is even remotely comparable (although Australia has failed to win that event for more than 30 years now so I guess it does provide some anecdotal evidence against pairs trials). On your second point, Australia's 2009 Bermuda Bowl team of I Thomson, I Robinson, D Appleton, A De Livera, P Reynolds, R Brightling was defintely selected by way teams trial - results. With no disrespect to any of these players who are all fine bridge players and certainly much better than me, this team went on to finish 18th/22 in the Bermuda Bowl which I believe was Australia's worst performance in the history of that event. This team overcame the favoured team of M Green, P Gill, S Hans, T Nunn, A Peake, B Richman in a 64-board semi-final and then defeated the four-handed team of J Ebery, L Gold, T Antoff, A Simpson by 70 imps over 64-boards in the final. Let me be quite clear - I am not an advocate of pairs trials, but I just don't see the evidence backing up Peter Gill statement, "teams selected by Pairs Trials are much worse than those selected by Teams Trials". What I do believe though is that for the size of its bridge population (32,707 which is greater than all but two European countries - France and Netherlands and I think is currently the 5th largest bridge population in the world) Australia has significantly and consistently under-performed at top-level bridge. So either we aren't very bright down here, we aren't developing our top players properly and/or we don't have our selection methods sorted out properly.

Whilst this is a tread about USA team selection methods, Australia is an interesting test case because we dable in both pairs-based and teams-based selection methods. I thought I'd have look at the data myself as it's all published on the internet and it turns out that over the ten year period that Peter refers to, the pairs-based teams have actually performed better than the teams-based teams in terms of average percentile placing in qualifying fields. Since 1/1/2000 Australia has played in 6 Bermuda Bowls and 3 Olympiads/WMSGs. Of those 9 teams, 2 were selected from a pairs trial and 7 were selected from a teams trial. The pairs-based teams contested the 2004 and 2008 Olympiads coming 7th/18 and 11th/18 respectively which on average is exactly mid-field (average placing of 50% of the field size). The teams-based teams have had 3 quite credible performances making the KO stages in the 2000 Olympiad and the 2003 and 2007 Bowls but have had some poor performances also - finishing in the bottom third of the field in the 2000 (in lieu of 1999), 2001, 2005 and 2009 Bowls. On average the teams-based teams have come just slightly below mid-field with an average placing of 52% of the field-size. Not much in it, but the statistics don't really support Peter's contention that "teams selected by Pairs Trials are much worse than those selected by Teams Trials". Another quite telling observation that I've made in compiling this data is that in the aforementioned events Australia has fielded no less that 37 players on its open team whilst in the same events Italy has only fielded 11 players and at no time has ever made more than 2 changes to its line-up.

In the barometer pairs events that I've played in, the barometer format isn't introduced until the final when the field is broken down into a final, plate and a number of consolation sections, so you get some efficiency with the boards being able to be physically played in each section. In a field of 28 tables broken down into 4 sections of 7 tables each playing a 13-round 2-board Howell movement, you could actually run the movement with 4 sets of boards if you had boards shared between 2 tables, but for comfort sake and to keep things moving it would be best to deal 7 sets of boards; but we are still only talking about an extra 3 sets on top of the 4 sets you would need anyway for a non-barometer movement. I'm not sure what the market rate is for a predealt set of boards, but I can't imagine it's much more than US$20 to hire a set of boards that's been predealt.