JRG

I believe I disagree with your ruling. The first thing is to identify the facts clearly. The 7♥ bid was made based on unauthorized information. That appears to be undisputed. What was not clear, was when was the director called. In any case, it is clear that the 7♥ bidders were the "offenders" and the other side were the non-offenders. If you are going to award an adjusted score (which the Laws require), then either it will be same result for both pairs or (Law 12 C2 - Assigned Score): The objective is to protect the non-offenders against the effect of the irregularity, not punish them because they couldn't figure out what to do. Personally, I think the time to call the director was when the 7♥ bid was made. In any case, "had the irregularity not occurred" then the non-offenders would have been defending 6NT Doubled and the result is clear (down 1) so that is what they should get. Now to see what the offenders should get. Note that the Law does not say it is simply a choice between what the non-offenders get and the table result. The result should be "the most unfavourable result that was at all probable". So what are the probable results? Clearly 7♥ Doubled making is one probable result (after all, that is what happened at the table). So is 7♥ Doubled down one (on a ♣ lead). Clearly down one is is the most unfavourable, and that is what they should get. If (and I know this is not the case on the hand in question), 6NT would go down 3 doubled and 7♥ only one doubled, they would get the score for 6NT doubled down 3. Now in the "Commentary on the Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge" published by the European Bridge League (I have mentioned elsewhere that I'm reading this interesting book), examples are given where the Director (or Appeals Committee) gave an additional penalty to the offenders (so far I've only seen 10% used) "for a breach of the laws on propriety". This only appears to be done when the offending pair is an experienced pair (who should, presumably, have known better). However, I still haven't found anything in the Laws that supports doing this. Law 16 describes how to rule in the case of Unauthorized Information and Law 12 discusses Adjusted Scores. The Laws are very explicit on what things fall under "Procedural Penalties" (Law 90). If anyone can assist me in determining whether a Director is allowed to do this (i.e. assess an aditional penalty "for a breach of the laws on propriety"), I would be appreciative.

Hmmm. Anyone know what they scribble on the little notepads they use at the World Bridge Championships (when using screens)? [Just thought I'd try and get the train onto a track in a different country.] Despite a 30-year career in the computer field (software and hardware development), I have to admit to an obsessive-compulsive hatred of abbreviations -- it never bothered me to code "BXLE" in a program ("branch Index Less than or Equal" for the curious), but I guess I'm just weird as you should see what happens to the little bit of hair I have left when I read in a book, "... thru ...".

Ben has quoted the specific Law involved (16 - Unauthorized Information) that indicates you may not do what you question. I'm continuing to study the Laws (I wrote the Local Director's examination for our Zone, but haven't heard the results yet). There is a somewhat old book (it is based on the previous version of the Laws, but they are so similar it is still very relevant) called, "Commentary on the Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge 1987" (it was published in 1992 by the European Bridge League). It has a set of examples from real play, including from various championships. I happened to have read one last night that is relevant (Example 16 E) because it shows just how large an onus there is on players not to base calls on unauthorized information. The reason I found this example particularly interesting is that there did not appear to be any particular mannerism or other source of UI, but simply the opposite -- there was no possible source of AUTHORIZED information on which the player could have based his call. Here is the example (I corrected a couple of typos - hopefully I did not introduce any new ones!): Example 16 E Law 16 Commentary p16.1, p75.11 [hv=d=s&v=b&n=sqj865h107432d76ca&w=s97ha985dak3ckq105&e=sk42hkqjdq10942c94&s=sa103h6dj85cj87632]399|300|[/hv] (The auction shown was:) West North East South 1♣(1) 1♠(2) Double(3) Pass 1NT Pass 2♦(4) Pass 2♥ Pass 3NT Pass Pass(5) End (1) Strong; 16+ HCP. (2) Two suits of same rank. (3) 8+ HCP positive, any shape. (4) Alerted. Subsequently explained as "transfer to hearts". (5) At the end of the hand, West stated that he "thought partner had forgotten". Director: when this action was questioned by N/S, the Director ruled that West had used information which he was not entitled to use. He could not decide what was a likely result on the hand, so he cancelled the result, gave average plus and average minus and also penalized E/W 10% for a breach of the laws on propriety. Apeals Committee: not appealed. Comments: East has misbid. West has recognized this, probably because of an awareness that East tends to forget his system. West has no authorized information upon which to base action that takes into account a possibility that East does not have the hand he has shown. Law 16 sets out clearly what information may be used legitimately.

Remember Bourke & Smith are not saying vacant spaces theory is wrong; just that you have to be very, very careful about using it based solely on the opening lead -- the information you get from the opening lead is not random. The convincing argument for me was to simply play the hand in the same contract from the other side of the table (when the deal - all four hands - is the same). I think what most people are arguing in this thread is not using vacant spaces at all. This is essentially what Bourke & Smith do. At the risk of quoting too much from their book, they later go on to argue: Go back to the first layout (when South became declarer). What if West had still led a spade but the suit had broken 4-3? West would still have nine unknown cards to East's ten, but in fact the true odds would favor playing West for the ♦Q. Why? Because West has presumably led his longest suit -- spades -- in which he has only four. West, therefore, does not have five hearts or five clubs and may well have no more than three of either suit. The only time he will have a singleton diamond is when he is precisely 4-4-1-4, and then might equally have chosen to lead from a four-card heart or club suit. ==== As you suggested, the precise arguement above might not hold, depending on opponents' leading style, but the general concept of treating the information from the opening lead as meaningful rather than random does.

I believe the point being made is that the opening leader has to lead something. The fact that he leads his longest suit does not really tell you much (I would agree that if he leads from a 7-card suit, it does tell you something) and that you cannot really apply "vacant spaces theory' in this case. If, as suggested, you cash some cards in another suit and find out something else about the distribution of the opponents distribution, THEN you can apply vacant spaces. Their example shows the fallacy of taking too much of an inference from non-random information. The lead is not random (or at least we will assume it is not random). I found their book excellent (partly because I played bridge for too many years before trying to force myself to count out hands) and I recommend it to anyone working on improving their counting. As an aside, I found their presentation and explanation of the Monty Hall Trap excellent. For anyone who doesn't know the situation, it is: You are a game show contestant and on stage there are three doors. Behind one is a terrific prize (say $100,000) and behind the other two there are booby prizes. You are asked to pick one of the the three doors, which you do. Monty Hall then fools around a bit, offering you some amount of money, say $20,000, in exchange for your choice. Assuming you don't take his offer (you shouldn't), he says something like, "OK, let's take a look behind door number two" (i.e. one of the two doors you didn't choose), which of course contains a booby prize (Monty Hall KNOWS which door the big prize is behind). Now he ups his offer to $40,000 for your choice. Do you take his offer? Suppose he gave you the chance to change your choice of doors to the remaining door, would you switch? If you understand why you shouldn't take the initial offer of $20,000; why you should take the offer of $40,000 and why, given the chance, you should switch doors, then you will understand why you shouldn't use the Vacant Spaces Theory based on the suit of the opening lead.

Using "Vacant Spaces" based on the opening lead is fallacious. Perhaps the Monty Hall trap was not explained very well. In their book, "Countdown to Winning Bridge", Tim Bourke and Marc Smith blow the concept of using vacant spaces based on the opening lead out of the water. At the risk of breaking copyright, here is how you blow it away (this is a quote from pages 75-76 -- for the description of the Monty Hall Trap and other good commentary on the hand in question, you will have to buy or borrow the book!): Often, you cannot get a complete count of the hand, but you can gather sufficient information to make an 'educated guess' -- an informed decision that will be right most of the time. Such choices are often based on the 'Theory of Vacant Spaces.' The premise for this theory is that if West has, for example, eight unknown cards and East has only four, then West is twice as likely (8 to 4 or 2 to 1) to hold a specific missing card. This is absolutely true. However, a little learning can be a dangerous thing. Consider the following hand from a team-of-four match: [hv=n=sa63hj73daj854ck10&w=shdc&e=shdc&s=sj82ha85dk1063ca73]399|300|[/hv] The bidding goes 1♦ by North, 3NT by South and the opening lead is the ♠5 East wins the ♠Q and returns the 9. West overtakes with the ♠10 and you duck again. A third round of spades forces dummy's ace as East discards a heart. If you misguess the diamonds, your contract will fail. How do you tackle the diamonds. West has five spades to East's two, and thus East has eleven non-spades (or vacant spaces) to West's eight. It is therefore obviously the right percentage play to cash the ♦A and then finesse through East for the ♦Q on the second round... Or is it? Before deciding, take the North seat at the second table in the same match. This time the bidding is: (I have not repeated the hand, it is exactly as above.) 1NT by North, 3NT by South. North-South at this table are playing a 12-14 1NT, so you become declarer from the North seat in the same 3NT contract. East leads the ♥4 and you duck your ace until the third round, discovering in the process that West has only a doubleton heart. How do you tackle the diamonds? Since East has five hearts to West's two, West has eleven non-hearts (or vacant spaces) to East's eight. It is therefore obviously the right percentage play to cash the ♦K and then finesse through West for the ♦Q on the second round... Ah! We seem to have been here before. One of these two declarers is destined to go down, yet both have apparently taken the correct line of play. How curious! This situation is often called the 'Monty Hall Trap' after... (Explanation of the Monty Hall Trap omitted.) This scenario exemplifies a classic probability trap -- treating biased information as random. In the game show context, Monty Hall showed the contents of Door Two because it contained a booby prize. The information itself had a direct bearing on whether you received it, and that must be taken into account when assessing its value. ... Returning to the hand above, we can see that each declarer is faced with a similar problem, but that the information available apparently suggests opposite lines of play. Clearly, if both declarers base their play on 'vacant spaces theory' using only the information provided by the opening lead, one will go down. The reason for this is that the distribution of the suit that was led is biased information. It is not random at all. What has really happened? Yes, the defender on lead led his longest suit. That is a common enough occurrence, so why should you be surprised because he has more cards in that suit than his partner? ... (There is more -- buy the book, it is very well written.)

I have firewall and in another site PING works well - I don't know HOW to 'ping' in BBO tho :rolleyes:( I didn't mean that you cannot initiate a ping from behind a firewall. What I meant was that if your connection is from behind a firewall (and it is any good), that other people cannot ping you. So, attempts to ping some, but not all, players' hosts should fail. Ping is no longer a reliable means of telling if a host is alive.

Ping will not always work. Operating Systems can be configured to ignore ICMP Echo Messages (which is what ping uses). This is being done much more as a means of stopping hackers from locating hosts to attack. Any decent firewall software will make ping inoperative.

Uh, I disagree. They may have been very active in the auction. They may have pushed the opponents around; they may have accelerated the bidding and given the opponents a chance to go wrong. It is quite possible they were far from passive bystanders. They may have "earned" their good result.

What a load of ...! First of all, determining weither a system is a HUM or not is only 5 simple yes/no questions. Second, a TD isn't supposed to look up the rules, he's supposed to KNOW THE RULES - come on! Third, this silly argument of "no time enough" is also old news. If they make a mistake, it's because they didn't have time. I'm sick of this. I can understand there's not much time, but that's no reason at all to make unfounded decisions which you know might as well be wrong as right Afterwards when someone complains about the decision-in-a-hurry, TD's always have the same old arguments: "no time" and "hey, we put our free time in it, so give us some credit" (meaning "we can do whatever we want). They just have their arguments ready, and they are never punished, and probably not even warned about their mistakes after a complaint to abuse! Certainly a director is expected to know The Law; however, I think almost every director I've ever encountered at club games (and many at the few tournaments I've been to) carry the little "Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge" with them and refer to it often. So I think it is appropriate for even experienced directors to double-check the laws. Last Friday I directed my very first duplicate game. It was quite an experience. There is a lot to do that one tends to think of as having nothing to do with the Laws (though there ARE references to these things) -- such things as keeping the noise down, correcting scores when players enter scores on the wrong line of the travelller, moving the boards, keeping the game on time, etc. I think referring to "the book" is a good idea. In the confusion at the table, it is easy to remember incorrectly (or in my case, incompletely) or apply the wrong law. The hardest thing I found was to get people to wait for the short time it took to look up a law (I knew one I'd got wrong and wanted to correct it while I was still at the table -- luckily it worked out and I didn't have to assign an "artificial adjusted score" because of my own blunder). One thing that is especially interesting is that a book the chief tournament director (for my zone) lent me suggested that the director should be especially familiar with the laws concerning - Call Out of Turn - Insufficient Bid - Dummy's Rights and Limitations - Leads Out of Turn - Revoke as most of his rulings will relate to these. Only one of these (Dummy's Rights and Limitations) applies to online bridge!

I believe you will be visible in a Chatroom as well. Essentially, "invisibility" means you are not visible in the lobby, but will be visible in any activity you engage in (i.e. as mentioned, play or kibitz at a table, join a chatroom, etc.)

Copy & Paste works with the chat dialog box. Right you are. Note you can ONLY use it with the dialog. Once you press enter (or click Chat) and the message is displayed in the Chat Pane, you can no longer "Copy" it.

Seems to me that many of the directors seem to speak with one voice. They are pretty consistent with the type of enhancement they would like to see and tend to be supportive of each others better ideas. In a way, that is a form of committee (but a "special interest" one).

Unless the BBO client software has changed, you still cannot "Copy" from the Chat dialog. That is why others suggested storing your messages in a plain text file (you can use Notepad or any other editor). Then you can "Copy" from this file and "Paste" into the Chat dialog ("Paste" has always worked).

I understand I'm part of a minority. I also understand that BBI needs to make some money from BBO. I appreciate BBO being a free site. Having said that, I'm one of those people who really, really, hates advertisements. Here are a couple of examples (you can draw your own inferences as to their relevance to a money-making model): 1) I used to use the Eudora Pro e-mail program (at first on a Mac and then on a PC) when one had to buy it. Then they started distributing it free (paid for by displaying ads). You could still pay for it, in which case the ads were suppressed. YES, I continued to pay for it. [Hate those ads]. 2) Similar - I paid for the Opera web browser. 3) I watch much less television than appears to be the average (this is a subjective assessment, I could be wrong). It's not just the quality of the programming (at the risk of offending some people, I really cannot understand why people watch inane game shows) that stops me -- there are some programs I have really enjoyed. I simply cannot stand being brainwashed by the constant stream of advertisements. [For what it is worth, I probably watch about an hour a week of television. It would be less, but there are a couple of reasonably enjoyable shows that I watch with my wife.]

For what it is worth, banning kibitzers from a tournament seems silly to me. The only exception I'd make would be for something like the BIL where there are novices and beginners who might feel intimidated by the presence of a lot of kibitzers. If kibitzers cannot talk to players (via BBO), then what's the point? As pointed out elsewhere, people who want to cheat, will cheat regardless.

I vote for Pass. I've reopened on this kind of strength and had to defend an unbeatable game too often. If partner is trap-passing 1♠, then we will simply have to defend it undoubled. If partner's hand was flawed for a Takeout Double, then we can guess what the flaw is -- ♣ shortness (hey, he'll probably lead one if he has one!).

OK, here comes a response from Slothy... Alex, you there?

Each hand is supposed to be played exactly 16 times. I'm not sure if this changes in a tournament setting when an event has more than one section. Uday could answer this latter question.

ROFL. Reminds me of my volunteer time in Israel in 1967. Our favourite newspaper was an air-mail copy of a thick British paper someone got (it was printed on tissue paper).

I play that -- sort of. First, with with Dormer/Jordan you don't play 1x - 1y - 2NT showing 10+ with support. It is only used after a double (1x - Dbl - 2NT). The other thing is that when applied to the minors, a lot of people do what we do and reverse the meanings of a jump raise to the 3-level and 2NT (for exactly the reason you specify): 1m - Dbl - 3m = Limit raise 1m - Dbl - 2NT = Preemptive raise to 3 of minor You lose a bit of the preemptive effect (because advancer can cue-bid your minor at the 3-level over your 2NT bid), but it seems to work OK.

Has this got something to do with your nickname? :D

Though there are conventions I think are a waste of time, the list looks good enough already (especially with the summary). However, I have one comment: The fact that you can play in a ridiculous contract if partner forgets the convention hardly seems a reason to bash it. That is because if partner forgets ANY convention you play, you are in trouble. Getting a bottom for playing in a 2-1 fit is no worse than getting a bottom for playing 3NT when the opponents run their solid suit for down 3.

Actually, that's one of the reasons I stopped playing it! It's preemptive value is a two-edged sword. It preempted our own auction too frequently. Sometimes, especially vulnerable, the two level was also too high!!! Also, despite the response structure (a couple of other posts point out the commonest one I know of -- and the one we played), we found constructive auctions difficult. Perhaps we didn't understand how to handle our own convention well.

I thoroughly agree with you Luis. I light warning that one shouldn't comment on the opening lead seems more than adequate. If a later switch to a ♠ by east would have made a difference (and had occurred), then an adjusted score because of the Unauthorized Information would have also been appropriate.