david_c

That's a shame. I'd always been impressed by the old Scottish regulations - they seemed to take most of the good bits from the EBU OB, without following it down its more dubious paths. Certainly they were very well written, as system regs go. Whereas, the WBF regs are notoriously woolly (particularly the HUM definition, which sadly is probably also the most important section). Is Precision meant to be a Blue system? I can't find where the Precision 2♦ opening is allowed.

In standard methods, slight preference for A. As I see it, the point of A is specifically to guard against a heart raise from LHO, which happens very frequently on this auction. Distinguishing between 4- and 5-card spade suits helps opener know whether to compete over 3♥ (say). If you have neither 4 spades nor enough support to raise partner, there is not so much urgency since your hand is more defensive. Yes it would be nice to have a call to show this type of hand, but it feels right to give a higher priority to the hands where we can anticipate having to make a difficult competitive decision later. If we play a 1♦ opening that shows "real" length (say 1♦ = 4+ unbalanced or 5♦332) then A becomes even better since we can happily raise on 3 cards, which takes care of most of the problem hands. Whereas, after a short/multi-way 1♣ it's much less attractive: you've lost most of your raises, which makes any minor-suit oriented hand harder to bid, and many of these are important to compete with. So there I'd go for C, or come up with some structure specifically designed for this auction.

That seems a very different situation to me. If someone is cashing winners (or cards that they believe to be winners), then I'll usually be prepared to believe they would cash them from the top. But if they are conceding a trick - particularly if they are conceding a trick to the last card outstanding in that suit - then it seems perfectly natural to me to do that by playing a low one.

Perhaps it doesn't matter, but I would call this a misbid and not MI. Certainly the pair had a clear agreement to play "unusual", and IMO unusual is minors irrespective of what West thinks. I don't think this is the same as the situation where a pair has no firm agreement at all - here they do have a firm, well-documented agreement but one player doesn't understand it. I'd treat this the same as a forget.

I'm inclined to believe E/W. I'd call it a deviation (it's not a misbid because it was deliberate); no adjustment.

I'm slightly surprised to see this attributed to me, because I don't agree with it :P It's true that a separation between the hand types can help in some auctions, but I view this as a "second-order" kind of effect. And having no gap can be helpful sometimes too as it gives opener some flexibility. For a multi-way opening (one with some weak options and some strong options) what you really need is: - The weak option should be descriptive (homogeneous). - The strong option should be strong enough that it is safe for opener to bid again to distinguish it from the weak option. (See 10. breaking homogeneity.) Changing the NT range makes no difference to either of these things. It's a fine system and I'd play it myself in 1st seat non-vul, except that I prefer to play a single system throughout. The place where I think a gap does help is with responder's negative free bids, things like 1♣ : (2♦) : 2♠. In Polish club this is to play opposite a weak NT* but shows enough for game if opener has the strong type. This is one of the highlights of the Polish Club system, because it works very well when it comes up and it's very frequent. You can do the same thing in Millennium Club (the weak NT system) and it still works very well when it comes up - but it will come up much less frequently, because many of these hands are now game forces or invites. Indeed if you play NFBs you're now getting in the way of the game forcing types (which are much more common than in Polish Club); you can switch to transfers but that doesn't come for free either. [*Unless opener has a super-accept type of hand.]

Yes, I was trying to say that there are two examples in the book, and the other one is a rule of 25 hand.

Yes, Rigal gives this example of a strong 1♣: ♠ 86 ♥ K5 ♦ A4 ♣ AQJ8532 (Another example is a rule-of-25 15-count.) I don't think Rigal's style is particularly aggressive for a strong club system. Generally single-suiters are good hands for upgrading to a strong club, which is unfortunate because they tend to be undervalued by "rule of X" (particularly 7222s like the one above). Personally I think the EBU has done pretty well in this area - after all, it wasn't so long ago that the rule was 16+ HCP with no exceptions. But certainly there are plenty of hands disallowed that look like reasonable 1♣ openers for a traditional Precision style.

Isn't this just 5♦+1 to both sides (or 5♦= for N/S)? "Treating both sides as non-offending" means they each get the benefit of the doubt. But surely here there is no doubt that, without the director's mistake, N/S would have passed 5♦ out. No other contract is conceivable once East has chosen to correct to 5♦. In order to reach anything other than 5♦ we'd have to show that the director's error made a difference to East's choice of 5♦. I don't see any reason why this would be the case, and even trying very hard to give E/W the benefit of the doubt there doesn't seem to be any alternative call that leads to 6♦. I can understand the director wanting to give E/W something, but where is there anything to give?

Some of these posts surprise me: I think BUSA is blameless. Maybe bridge should be considered a sport, or maybe it shouldn't - either decision seems reasonable. But once it has been decided that bridge is not a sport for BUSA's purposes, then they can no longer claim to officially represent bridge. A BUSA staff memeber no longer has the authority to send off applications relating to bridge. They can pretend they have the authority, but that would be a lie, and very unprofessional, and it seems rather unfair to put pressure on them to do this. Surely EUSA are the villains here. They must know perfectly well that not all sporting organisations include bridge as a sport, and yet they only accept entries through those organisations? That's mind-boggling. It comes across as EUSA being less interested in staging a bridge event, and more interested in using bridge players as pawns in the game of getting national organisations to recognise bridge as a sport.

I'd change Law 27. In the previous incarnation of IBLF, bluejak posted an idea for this which I thought was excellent: - If an insufficient bid is not accepted, it can be corrected to the lowest sufficient bid in the same denomination, regardless of what those bids might mean. - Any other correction silences partner in the usual way, again regardless of what it might mean. - Information from the replaced insufficient bid is UI to partner.

I'm not a fan. I think Zar points give the illusion of accuracy without actually being accurate. As Tysen says in the link Richard gave, "Zar's method of distribution counting just doesn't reflect real trick-taking ability accurately." It's all very well wanting to take distributional values into account. But if you're going to give a complicated formula, you'd better make sure that this complexity is actually being used to good effect. Given how complicated Zar's method is, it really ought to come fairly close to how experts actually evaluate their hands. But it doesn't. For example - what do you think the difference is between a 4333 and a 4432 shape? Experts seem to rate 4333 as a minor downgrade for the purposes of opening the bidding; personally I'd put a value of about -0.3 HCP on 4333s. Zar points evaluate 4333 as being 2 ZP worse, which corresponds to about 1.5 HCP; that's the same as the value of a queen in this method. No, if you're going to make a system which takes shortage into account, it really ought to give it its proper value, not massively over-value it. Similarly, I don't think it makes sense to try and express distribution very accurately, while ignoring other important factors (such as tens) altogether. Basically you have a choice: either you can use your judgement to evaluate hands, or you can delegate to some complex point-count method. It makes no sense to have a complex point-count method which is so flawed that you have to use your judgement to correct for its flaws. To be fair there are many good ideas in the Zar method. 6-4-2-1 is in many ways a better high-card evaluation method than 4-3-2-1. But this is nothing new, and it seems other people have implemented things like this much better than Zar.

The phrase you quoted was the explanation for the noun "subsitute". I change my vote though to "both exist" and "jdonn is right in this specific use in law 27B4". However, in the context that REALLY matters, i.e. football (the one with a ball not the one with a banana), there is clearly a "substitute" = new player, and a "substituted player" = the one who had to come off the field. Agree with this: Josh's version looks right to me in this context, but I think in general it could be either.

Hmm. I do think that, if you have not discussed it, you have a right to expect that partner will bid 2♦ on this sort of hand. I do actually think 2♣ is the better bid (in fact I prefer to play 2♣ as artificial - clubs or any balanced hand) but I would say this is by agreement only. [Edited for clarity]

Actually that's not true. Certainly the EBU has a procedure for recording psyches, but the TD is not obliged to record every one. The EBU's Orange Book (section 6C1) says: Psychic bids do not have to be reported but a player may request the TD to record them if he wishes. To do so is not to accuse the opponents of malpractice. The TD may record any hand if he thinks fit.

I don't psyche much anyway. But I would only do it against opponents who I know will appreciate it. In a club game I'd say the same thing as gnome - it's not worth the hassle. I play bridge for fun, and if opponents are annoyed at me, that's no fun for me. As a TD, I would recommend that people don't psyche against players who are likely to be upset by it. But if they're going to go ahead and do it anyway, that's their choice to make. However, I do think that if you are going to psyche you have to be especially careful with your behaviour. It seems to me that many psychers are rather bad at dealing with the negative reactions that they get. Two things I've seen happen when asked to explain a psyche: - Uncontrollable laughter. Not good. Gives the impression that you're having fun at the opponents' expense. - Saying, "I can bid what I want" or "Deal with it" or words to that effect. This may all be true according to the Laws, but it comes across as arrogant and obnoxious. Generally I find people who have psyched tend to react too defensively when the TD is called. If they could avoid this then psyching might not be so much of a problem.

I don't agree that it was a serious error. But even if it was, you'd still have to adjust the score for the offending side, would you not?

Oh. :rolleyes: In that case ... What about West's opening lead? OK we can ignore East saying he might have doubled 3♥, as that doesn't seem very plausible, but maybe West might find a heart lead anyway? Unless I'm misreading the auction again :) , it seems to me that the MI could have put West off leading a heart. Maybe he wouldn't always lead a heart, but if there is some chance, and the MI made it less attractive, then he still deserves an adjustment.

I think it is clear to adjust the score. Not because of East's claim that he might double 3♥ - I don't believe that at all. But what about West's defence? If he'd been told that declarer had asked for a heart stop, and then dummy appeared with ♥xx, might he not switch to a heart at trick three? The misinformation made it much harder to find the heart switch. Adjust to 3NT-1, or consider a weighted score if you are allowed to do that.

I believe that the idea to apply this Law more leniently has actually come from the WBF. So it isn't just an ACBL thing. I don't know exactly what the WBF has said (maybe someone can help us out here), but I think the gist of it is that we're supposed to consider the basic meaning of a bid, and not worry about exceptional cases or subtle negative inferences. See this BLML post about the EBU's discussion of the issue.

Probably the simplest is just to have a 2♦ catch-all and otherwise natural bidding. Personally I think it's very important to have a way to distinguish strength, as this is very difficult to achieve by purely natural bidding. The simplest method I know of that does this is as follows: 2♦ = any minimum 2♥ = max, precisely 5 M, not 4 OM 2♠ = max, 4+ OM 2NT = max, 6+ M 3♣/3♦ = max, good 5-5 You can revert to natual bidding after that; alternatively after 1M : 2♣ , 2♦ you can do something like this - 2♥ asks (including any balanced hand) : ... 2♠ = precisely 5 M, no other 5-card suit ... 2NT = 6+ M ... 3-suit = 5 cards 2♠ = artificial GF showing real clubs 2NT = three-suited short in M (maybe not great clubs) and again this allows a quick return to natural bidding.

Yeah. Just about anywhere in the world outside ACBL-land, defending against a multi is part of the game: everyone has to learn to cope with it. And even the ACBL members will come across it frequently if they play online. Surely the junior tourneys would be an ideal place to gain this sort of experience. And, like others said, most juniors enjoy experimenting, and even the ones who don't aren't bothered by what their opponents play; so why spoil their fun? If it was a more serious competition I could understand it.

The Cavendish is a unique event in many ways. If it has particularly restrictive system regulations, then maybe that's part of what makes it special. Surely we can live with having one event a year like this. I see nothing wrong with having a bit of variety in conditions of contest. Clearly the regulations are a mess - they have out-ACBLed the ACBL - but again, this event's special status means that it won't be a problem. There are only a small number of pairs taking part, all of whom know what they are doing; so I'm sure the organisers would be more than happy to answer their questions. And there shouldn't be a problem with consistency as the event is so small. Of course I still agree with Gerben. There is no excuse for poorly-written regulations. It sets a bad example to other tournament organisers.

How odd. When we have a national event over here, it's run by the national bridge organisation. That makes sense to me. How come the ACBL expects the locals to take on so much responsibility?

Does seem quite well-written, but I hate the emotive title. When you've done a good job of explaining some of the complex issues that go into making a crisis, why weaken the argument by pinning it all on "unrestrained greed"? Well, I know why: it's because you want to sell more copies of your book. Now that is greed.