mink

IF LHO passes the 2!S, then he obviously used UI from the missing Stop card. Or their jump is weak, and therefore should be alerted, and you are misinformed.

The UI - if this is really an UI - suggests to be alert and try to read partner's signals. If West had not claimed his ♥ and conceded the rest, he would have played under the impression that the card he will play after his ♥ cards is unimportant, and that partner would not signal anything meaningful as the partnership will not get another trick anyway. Karl

By omitting the [...] parts of the text of this law you created a sentence that makes no sense any more. Law 49 mentions the fact that there are some exceptions where an exposed card of a defender does not become a penalty card and refers to the Laws where this is defined in detail. In no way Law 49 contains any statement about the nature of the objection, neither explicitly nor implicitly. Karl

LAW 68B2 reads: After his partner has objected, the player trying to concede knows that partner intends to win trick(s) that conceder did not expect him to win. The text of the Law does not explicitly refer to this information, but only labels information arising from the conceder's exposed cards as UI. Law 16A1c states that information arising from legal procedures may be used. Objecting a concession is a legal procedure. So I would think that it is not UI to know that partner expects to win some trick(s). Furthermore, even if I would believe the knowledge was UI, I wonder what a player is expected to do in possession of such UI. Shall he play a suit where it is most unlikely for his partner to win a trick, even if partner has signalled for some other suit? The question arose from the following example: [hv=pc=n&s=sj8hq73d765ca9732&w=sathjt9654d984ct8&n=sq7652hk2dkqjt2ck&e=sk943ha8da3cqj654&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1sp1np2dp2nppp&p=hjhkhah3h8hqh4h2d5d4dkdas3s8sas2]399|300[/hv] 4 Tricks played (Click "Next"). Now West displays all his remaining ♥ cards without saying anything. East objects. When play continues, we can expect West to win his 4 ♥ tricks first. Discarding on this, East can easily signal for ♠. Should West really be required to shift to ♣ when he runs out of ♥, actively ignoring partners signal? This was discussed in the German bridge mailing list "Doubl". Some of the contributors really believed that the information about East's objection is UI for West, and one of them cited Ton Kooijman ("Commentary to the 2007 edition of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge"): In my view, this comment in contradiction to the Law. What do you think? Karl

I suggest not to run survivor tourneys at all. It can always happen that you have several bad boards in the first round which are not your fault at all. It is embarrassing to be kicked out of the tourney in this situation. Karl

I fully agree with Example 1. Example 2 sounds like you think that declarer's option apply to the following trick, to which no card has been played yet, except that West tried to lead out of turn. I believe, however, that the card that East still has to play to the first trick, where a diamond was led, is subject to possible restrictions by South. The text of Law 57A does not state explicitly which trick is meant. However, I never had any doubt the it must be the current trick, where offender's partner has an UI by the premature lead, and declarer is put into the position to prevent the use of this UI by requiring or forbidding plays by offender's partner. [hv=pc=n&s=shdqjtc&w=s2h2dkc&n=skjhdc2&e=shada2c]399|300|In this example South is declarer in an nt contact and leads from the hand, West follows suit and the dummy plays ♣2. Before East follows suit West already leads ♠2 to the next trick, under the impression that East must have the ♠A. If there were no options for the declarer, East could win the trick with ♦A in order to at least get the trick with the ♥A. But thanks Law 57A South can require East to play his lowest ♦ card and so avoid an UI ruling (you never know if TD would get that right).[/hv] Karl

North has 21 HCP, and West should have at least 11. So if East has the remaining 8 HCP and a void, this could be a gameforcing hand. And there is no law that forbids a player who psyched to issue another bid. North was perfectly entitled to trust the information he had been provided with and pass knowing the the game-forcing auction cannot be over at this point. It cannot be a double shot, because if North suspects that something is wrong he still cannot know that there was an infraction - apart from the possible psyche by West another scenario is that the bid is indeed game-forcing according to their documented methods, but East forgot and was under the impression of bidding non-forcing. I would adjust to South 3nt+1, assuming that with the correct information North might cuebid 3♠ instead of his pass. Additionally I would inquire about what exactly the 2♥ did show, and what the maximum strength and minimum length for this bid is. Maybe it turns out that 3♥ was a LA for East. Karl

Discarding the ♦K is a no-brainer for any decent player provided that he is aware that of King still being present in his hand. The claim statement suggests he is not aware of that. The reason might be that he had planned the discard of the K long ago and being mentally ahead thinks it has been already done. And as the dummy is high there is no need to really look in the hand and realize the K is still there. Even if he does look, maybe the King is hidden behind some other card. So not allowing the claim does not mean that the TD thinks that declarer is a bad bridge player, but on the contrary the TD assumes declarer is a good player who would certainly state the unblocking if he was aware of the King. Karl

But the assumption was that East bid 6♣ with 2 minor aces and a void in ♠. This sounds very likely to me. Given the false explanation, if East was not void in ♠ he should have all three other aces or 2 minor aces and a void in ♥. Both I regard much more unrealistic than a void in ♠. This would be sad. Yes it is, but I would still insist that the ♥ lead cannot be gambling in the first place, and use this argument only as a hypothetical one. Karl

My face-to-face partner does not like to play online very often, and she would never play a robot tourney. This results in being not able to play most of the free tourneys together even though none of us ever quits a tourney. The algorithm should really be changed that players who have not quit tourneys for some time are not regarded as runners, no matter how few tourneys they did play in the last two months. Karl

I had such kind of a problem at a vugraph some minutes ago: After the 10-boards-vugraph was finished and the table closed, I could access the distribution of boards 2 to 10 of my table (I joined while board 2 was played) and boards 5 and 6 of the other table. My table had been closed after the other table. Maybe that helps to fix the problem. Karl

A moment ago I have been host at a Main Bridge Club table. While the cardplay of Board 26 was under way, East left the table and was automatically replaced by a robot. North, the declarer, had played a card, so it was immediately the robot's turn to play. However, nothing happened. I called BBOHELP to the table but it seemed like they did not see the problem. Eventually, West left the table, too, and was replaced by another robot. Apparently this triggered the East robot to play, and the board was played out. Suggestion is to fix this, maybe a timing problem that occurs rather seldom and is difficult to reproduce. Karl

Thank you Scarletv for this information, I was not aware of the possibility to chat via the general chat line instead of sending a mail via the profile chat line. I have just tried it and it is still the same. This is a clear bug and should not be so difficult to repair. Karl

Tonight I tried the same as described in my starting post, and there was no malfunction whatsoever. BBO Version is still the same. I have no idea what made the difference. Karl

I know I can see the time via "BBO Now", but it would be more convenient if I could see the time displayed in some corner of the window, maybe along with my partner's name, so that I can click on that name and chat with partner, which would be convenient for pickup partnerships. Karl

I have just finished a tourney. I am able to access all my 15 boards, and the boards 1-12 from "other Tables". When I click to "other tables" for boards 13, 14 or 15 (the last round), I can see the list of scores, but I am not able to see the bidding and play of any other table. If I try to click on any table's result, simply nothing happens, and the bidding and names of my own table remain to be displayed. Karl

Thanks all for your posts. Now, I would like to share my own opinion about the 2 questions I have asked. 1. Should North's explanation of the 2♣-bid be regarded as Mistaken Explanation? Of course, if we assume that what he said was the best way to describe the N/S-system, we cannot ask for more or better explanation. That he informed opps about his opinion what what the bid should mean is also OK in this kind of situation, as it is difficult to express the implicit partnership understanding - the feeling - in some other way. For sure North can make a better guess how South did mean the bid than opps can. Would he do a better job if he said that he just did not know if it was natural or the majors, because this was not discussed for this specific situation? I think, not, because then opps have no clue on what version they should base their further bidding, and he had failed to include implicit partnership understanding in his explanation. Generally, in some bidding situation that never occurred for a partnership before, and that they did not talk about in advance, for sure it is correct to explain: "No agreement". But in our current situation, this explanation would not be correct of course: I was right that North mentioned their 2-suiter agreement. My point now is that it was not correct by N/S to leave the limitations of this agreement undefined, so that they did not know what their system was in the current situation. This is clearly different from "No agreement" - it is a "maybe we have an agreement, and maybe it is natural". So N/S are in doubt what their system is. And this implies that they cannot explain their system to opps, not matter how hard they try, it will always be Mistaken Explanation. 2. Should we award an adjusted score, and which? Mistaken Explanation caused E/W to face a problem that they would not have encountered if North had given an explanation in accordance with the South hand. E/W showed that they were not able to deal with that problem properly, because they had completely different ideas of what there bidding should mean here. However, we cannot conclude from that that similar misinterpretation would happen if they were in possession of the correct information. My judgement is that they would reach 3nt, with either of them being declarer. If East happens to be declarer, the lead depends on whether East showed his ♠-Stopper or West showed her ♥-stopper. This is difficult to predict, and my guess would be ♥ lead is found 25%. So I would award a weighted score: 50% of W3nt+1, 37.5% of E3nt+2 and 12.5% of E3nt-1. Karl

South did not say anything while I was at the table. I would expect him to speak if he believed that there was an agreement (implicit or explicit) that they show a 2-suiter here. However, I really should have asked him anyway. East's point of view was that without a ♣-stopper they could not play 3nt, and they were too weak for game in diamonds. And he was quite confident that his interpretation of the meaning of the E/W-calls was the correct one. He spoke German of course, and I do not remember his exact wording. My impression was that they did not explicitly agree on something for the 4th seat when 2 suits were bid, and they were unsure if their 2-suiter agreement covered this case or not, and there was no meta-agreement. Apparently, South thought system should still be on and North thought it should be off, and none of them could really prove that the other was wrong. The partnership is some years old, but I think they do not play together very often, as there is some distance between their home towns. There is no such regulation.

The following bidding took place in a regional German team league: [hv=pc=n&s=skjt73hq8763d5c75&w=s82hk5d762cakq942&n=s9654haj4dqj98c83&e=saqht92dakt43cjt6&d=w&v=b&b=20&a=1cp1d2cdp3cp3dppp]399|300[/hv] N/S are decent players, and their team had won the league about 3 years ago, while E/W tend to occupy the lower half of the ranking table. E/W play 5 card majors, 1♣ only 2 cards in case of 4=4=3=2. 2♣ was immediately asked about, and explained by North: "We play 2-suiter cue bids if only one suit was bid by opps. However, I do not remember if we discussed this case. I tend to assume that 2♣ is natural here." I was called after the hand had been finished. The E/W bids were interpreted differently by the players. West thought: the double showed ♣ 3♣ showed ♣ 3♦ showed ♦ East thought: the double showed the majors 3♣ asked for a stopper in ♣ 3♦ showed no ♣ stopper and minimum Question 1: Assuming that North made the best explanation he was able to give, should this be presumed Mistaken Explanation as defined in Law 21B1b? Question 2: If your answer to question 1 was "yes", should an adjusted score be awarded, and what score should that be? Additional information, not really relevant for the case: Result as played was E3♦-1. The score at the other table of this match was E3nt+1. All 8 other tables reached 3nt, twice played by West with an overtrick. When played by East, it went down at 3 tables after a ♥ lead and scored 2 or 3 overtricks at the other 3 tables.

I wonder if it makes a difference whether the question was about the 5♣ bid or worded like "What are your responses to the blackwood question?". Both questions will likely get the same answer, so one could argue that they semantically equivalent. If mentioning the ♣ suit explicitly draws attention to that suit, isn't that achieved also by a question that avoids to mention the suit but nevertheless obviously refers to the 5♣ bid? Karl

You are right that thinking before 3♦ and bidding 4♥ at once transmits the UI that the last bid is natural. However, assuming normal tempo I would not have imagined that 4♥ might be a control bid, but always assumed that partner wants to play ♥. Karl

by East in this deal trick 3 and trick 10 Karl

Compatibility for me is composed of several unrelated factors: 0. Friendliness: There is no objective way to measure this, so I would stick to the Friend/Enemy lists. As this is already shown, there is no need to factor it into the compatibility. 1. Completion rate: This should be a factor, even though it is indicated separately. 2. Do we have a language in common? - This would require the possibility for each player to state the languages he is able to use for communication. 3. Knowledge of Bidding systems and conventions: There should be a list of well described bidding systems and conventions somewhere in BBO, and each player should be able to mark each system and convention with "unknown", "known", "used before", or "like". The relative amount of matches should be an important factor for compatibility. 4. Carding: Similar, but shorter list. 5. Declarer play: For each board played as declarer, and for each card played, determine if the player chose the optimal double dummy action or not. Use this to compute a % value "double dummy action chosen". The smaller the absolute value of the difference of this figure is for 2 players, the more compatible they are. I think this should be the most important factor. 6. Defending: same as declarer play, but it should be taken into account if the defenders shared common carding methods or not. It could even be implemented for each user to assign a weight to factors 1-6. Factors that should be not used for the compatibility are: Nationality, self-rating, masterpoints, ratio of number of friends/enemies, IP address (as this depends on where I happen to stay currently, or can even be totally meaningless when a satellite connection or a vpn-tunnel is used.) How often the par contract or better was reached should also not be taken into account, because this is to much dependent on partner and opps. Having available the %-Values for declarer play and defending might also help to identify cheaters. Karl

I agree with what Pran said. Furthermore, if I were West, I would have no idea if the my partner was thinking about penalty, raise the clubs or even rebid the diamonds. Therefore, no valuable information is passed, and the pause did not suggest anything specific. Karl

Nice reason. Yes, if you read it literally. But it is only about putting a card into a played position and not about playing a card. I think we agree that Law 45D does never apply if the card is really played or designated by the declarer. I fail to find a law that allows the retraction of a card simply for the reason it was played out of rotation. On the contrary, Law 47 that lists all cases when a card may be retracted, and fails to mention a card played out of rotation. Nearly always when more than one infraction happens at the same time or close to each other, the Laws fail to tell us exactly what to do. Such a case is the dummy "playing" a card, doing this out of turn, and the defender after the dummy plays out of rotation, too. If the dummy puts a card in the played position when it is his turn to play, and the declarer had named a different card or no card a all, we use Law 45D of course. On the other hand, if the declarer makes a legal lead from the dummy, and the next card is played by the declarer from his hand while RHO is still thinking, there is no Law that defines any rectification for this situation. Especially the declarer is not allowed to put the played card back into his hand, which Law 45D requires for the dummy. Only if LHO now plays out of turn, too, Law 57C becomes effective and again no rectification occurs for this play out of turn. It would be ridiculous if the defender playing out of turn after the dummy does something wrong may take back his card, while the other defender who plays out of turn after the declarer's play out of turn must not retract his card. A solution to this ambiguity is only to use Law 57C in both cases and Law 45D only if the dummy "plays" in turn - this is what it was designed for. The other reason is that Law 57D is specifically designed to deal with the current situation. If the intention of this Law was that Law 45D should be applied, too, there would be a reference to Law 45D in Law 57C, and probably some words to resolve the ambiguity that though Law 57C just states there is no rectification, Law 45D defines a rectification that affects the defender. Karl