mink

By his statement, East has conceded at least a total of 6 tricks, one of them already lost (Law 68B1). Play ceases (Law 68D). Law 69D3 (about play after the claim) should not be applied because South probably was not aware that East's statement constituted a concession, and was influenced by the statement to think his further play will be immaterial, at least at MP scoring. As a result of the concession the score is 5♦X-4 (1100 for N/S). E/W receive a penalty of half a top for the wording of the concession, which in effect criticizes South for tanking (Law 90 A , "nconveniences other contestants"). Karl

I fully agree with Robin, with a little exception: "2♦ is sometimes natural and sometimes majors" is not the N/S agreement for sure. The OP referred to the 3♦ bid and said it was random. I rather think that, if East believed what the CC said, the bid makes sense: if opps can make 2♥, 3♦ is maybe a good defense. Actually, it was a good defense even though South had 5 diamonds. Therefore, there should be no adjustment if the contract without the misinformation had been 2♥, as there was simply no damage. However, it is possible that West finds a takeout double of 2♥ if East passes, and this may lead to 2/3♠ or 3♣ by West (which maybe makes) or 3♥ by North (which can be defeated). About the disciplinary penalty for East: If he said what the said the way you cited it, I cannot find that this was an accusation of his opponents. There must be a way to state this without accusing anybody. However, I did not hear what he really said, and maybe the accusation resulted from tone and mannerism. Karl

This is not correct. When after an infraction you offer the opportunity to accept a call or a card played, the player should know all consequences of his decision as defined in the law. I would say something like this: "After you have heard all my explanations I shall ask you if you accept the 1♥ call. If you accept, the auction continues and you may bid anything above 1♥, including 1♠ and 1nt, or pass or double, and no lead restrictions apply after the auction. If you do not accept, the 1♥ bid is canceled and must be replaced by any legal bid or pass, but not by a double. West must pass for the rest of the auction, and lead restrictions may apply. But there are 2 exceptions to the forced passes: 1.: 1♥ is replaced by 2♥ and both bids are not artificial. 2.: If 1♥ is artificial and the replacement bid has the same or a more precise meaning, West also is not forced to pass. Now, do you accept the 1♥ bid or shall it be canceled?" Of course, the player can now ask about opps' system and find out that 1♥ is artificial, or, not totally unlikely in the given situation, get a misinformation from West. The director of course must not correct the misinformation. If finally the 1♥ bid is canceled, and a replacement call is executed, the director must communicate his decision whether West must pass or may bid for the rest of the auction, and that the non-offending side may request an adjustment if they feel damaged after the board will have been played. If 1♥ is cancelled, the lead restriction is of course based on ♠, unless ♠ is specified by East later in the auction. Karl

The diagram shows that West bid 2♠, but in the text you say that North bid it - I assume the text is correct. What exactly was the ruling? The correct way to handle this for the director is, according to law 27: Explain what might happen Give East the opportunity to accept the insufficient 1♣ bid If it is not accepted, tell North that he can make any sufficient bid or pass, but South must pass for the rest of the auction; and if E or W become declarer, when South has to lead for the first time, declarer may require or forbid a ♣ lead If North knew that South must always pass, I expect him to bid something else than 2♣. If, however, he had already replaced the 1♣ with 2♣ before the director arrived, then this will be the final contract maybe. Karl

If you do not only read what Bobby Wolff writes, you find out that Wolf Stahl, responder in this auction, wrote that they said in the hearing that in their 6 year partnership Wolf Stahl had psyched 5 or 6 times at all, in different situations. I have no reason to question this statement, and it is not uncommon that somebody unconsciously modifies what he hears to something that better fits into the way he sees the matter. He also writes that he was not aware what had happened after he had seen the 2♣ bid. If he really anticipated what it meant he would have bid 2♦ (looking for a 4-4-fit) instead of passing. By definition it is impossible to tell opps that we have psyched, because if we had to tell it would be an agreement and no psyche anymore. Karl

I agree. IMO the suitable place for such restrictions is Law 70D2. Here, the director is currently advised to select the least favorable among the normal plays of the claiming defender's partner. The proposed change is to replace "normal play" by "non-irrational play". This should be defined to be any play that is normal for a player who cannot remember the tricks already played. So the director still cannot force him to ruff a trick already won by his partner or to duck when he is able to win a trick. But in such a case as this thread where it is reasonable for West to win his partners K with the A if the Q has already been played, the non-offending-side would benefit from this change, and the outcome would be the same as applying Law 57 if there was no claim an defender plays his last card prematurely. Karl

I would like to see the south hand before I answer. Karl

Maybe you were watching a Vugraph - there kibs cannot chat. Karl

I have been using the beta client with the new cards for about 2 weeks now. The cards felt a bit strange first, but now I totally used to them. This is probably the problem of all who stick to the windows client because they like the windows cards more - they simply did not try other cards for some period of time. The new cards rate to be an advantage on relatively small screens, because they are so bold. I am not sure if I return to the original web client cards, because they are nicer and fit on my big display, or if I stick with the new cards. Future users should be able to chose, too - both versions of cards should survive. Karl

Maybe read this: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/56955-what-about-bbo-win/page__view__findpost__p__685346

An unintended call is only unintended if in the moment the call was made it was the player's intention to make a different call. Finding another card subsequently does not affect the intention to pass when the card was not yet found. A normal way unintended calls happen with bidding boxes is that the unintended bidding card sticks to the intended one. Karl

As a player, I would guess that when the results are there and the session is completed, the director has ruled score stands and did only have time to tell this to the side that might like to challenge this ruling. As I director, I certainly would not publish results before having completed all rulings and informed all players affected by the ruling and made the resulting adjustments, if required. About the judgement: Declarer was not informed that 10 might be top of inner sequence. Defenders were not sure if this was included in their understandings or not, so we assume it was included. On the other hand, olegru did never state that the 10 denies an honor. If I was declarer, and if I was thinking about the ♥-finesse, I would have asked. But defenders cannot rely on the assumption that declarer will ask what they forget to mention. So yes, there was misinformation. The other question is: Even if I know that West might have ♥K, is it more likely that the finesse will gain another trick or is it more likely that we lose another trick if it fails? With the current distribution the finesse works fine, but only because the ♠ finesse is also on. If both major kings are offside, it is quite obvious that the finesse results in 10 tricks, and not taking the finesse yields 11 tricks, as you can ruff in ♥ 3 times. If my analysis is correct (not quite sure) you get always 11 tricks if the kings are in different hands, no matter if the ♥ finesse is taken or not. Probably the bidding showed that West is the stronger opponent, and therefore the current distribution is a lot more likely. So it is reasonable to take the finesse, and the director should award 13 tricks. Karl

This was my first thought, too, but as the first double was takeout, the 3♦ bid probably did not show the 8 card suit yet. South should really think that North still assumed the (much more frequent) 15-17 case when doubling. Karl

There was one infraction not yet mentioned: North, as he confessed himself, remembered the system when seeing the 4♦ bid. At this time he should have called the TD and make a late alert, thereby informing opps. Failing to do this is worth another PP IMO. After correct information I judge that the contract will be 5♦ doubled. I fail to see, however, why West should find another lead than he did against 4♦, and I also cannot see a reason why declarer should play the clubs differently, so result is -1 - same number of tricks as in the original play. Karl

Playing a game requires to obey the rules. If there is an infraction, some rectification, as specified in the rules (Bridge: Laws), should be applied. This is fundamental. Law 11A is an exception ("may be forfeited"). Unfortunately, the conditions for this exception are not defined, only an example is given. IMO the directors's laziness is not a valid condition. "any action before summoning the director" is not the same as "any action before attention has been drawn to the irregularity", which would have been the more general clause. Therefore I consider it wrong to apply this law to cases where no attention had been drawn to the irregularity at the time when it happened. This is especially true if the non-offending side really did not see that something went wrong and finally gets a bad score. There is another aspect that has not been mentioned yet. Duplicate Bridge is not played just at one table. The score of all other contestants is influenced by any non-artificial score. Is it really desirable that either side gets a top after messing up the auction beyond rectification? Karl

If a law restricts you in some way, and you break this restriction, it must be possible for the TD to find out about this. But if some path of thinking was illegal, we would need TDs with mind-reading capabilities. Karl

iviehoff, if you rule score stands, you implicitly rule that the inadmisible double at some point, maybe when they started to play cards, turned into an admissible double. I fail to find a Law that allows this. If it was allowed, however, imagine the double was followed by a redouble and three passes. What is the correct score for the 8 tricks then? Karl

If a TD considers whether something has happened that possibly requires to adjust a score, he must assume this falls under point 2 above, as if it was within 1 opps act at their own risk. In point 2, however, the words "attempt" and "purposeful" occur. That means that the first fact the TD should establish is if there was indeed a pause and if declarer intentionally took some time before playing his ♥A. Nothing of that is mentioned in the OP, so I believe phil_20686 that the break was short and unintentional --> no infraction. Even if it was an infraction, North could know that any thinking by declarer cannot be about what to play now, because ducking trick 1 would be suicide. West knows this and North knows this too, holding ♣A. Therefore North should not be mislead by the pause. Even if somebody thinks he might be mislead, declarer will make most of the time. No matter how unlikely it is for North to hold the ♣A, it cannot hurt to play to the K in trick 4. He returns to the hand in trump an plays his last ♣. Now North knows that South has an odd number of ♣ cards. So if he ducks again, he gives up the trick with ♣A and must rely on declarer getting it wrong. So he will rather win now and hope for another ♥trick. Even if he ducks again, declarer may well play the Q. Karl

"May never be accepted" means all what follows is not an auction, no contract can be established, the card play is pointless and no result can be achieved. So I adjust according to Law 12C2a. N/S get A-. I would ask E/W what had been going on in their minds and award some artificial score depending on their answers and their experience with the Laws. Karl

I bid 4♦, rkcb for ♦. If the superaccept creates a gameforcing, I would also consider 3♦. Karl

Is it legal to ask a question without a bridge reason? Especially if it is a question that implies doubt about the bid having been properly alerted/not alerted? IMO the question "Is that natural" or something similar should never be asked, unless you have a clue e.g. that there has been a misinformation in the past and you want to make sure that it does not happen again. Or if I know a plair has been playing Verdi and the 3♦ bid is not alerted, then I could ask about the bid instead of assuming that they changed their system to natural preempts. But if opp asks about my partner's natural 1♦ opening, there needs to be some bridge reason for that, and a common reason (not a good reason of course) is that this opp holds diamonds. If it later turns out that he has no special ♦ holding, I would be interested to learn about the bridge reason. If he cannot provide a reason other than curiosity (which is synonym for no reason IMO), I think that Law 73F is applicable. If, on the other hand, he had a valid reason for the question other than a ♦ holding, I am unlucky if I assumed a diamond holding and do not reach the optimal contract because of that assumption. Karl

In szenario 1 I assume that the misinformation affects the decision what to lead (the process of the decision is different), but, by chance, the odds of the well-informed decision are the same as the odds of the mis-informed decision (which is hardly true in reality, but anyway). So I cannot see any difference between scenario 1 and szenario 2. Law 12B1: What table result do we expect if West got the correct information? For sure, this cannot be something weighted, as there would be no adjustement without misinformation. What we expect is 3nt= or 3nt-1. In one of the expected cases, there is damage. This is true no matter what the odds for 3nt= and 3nt-1 are. When possessing the correct information, West's thinking process takes a different route, and only at the end of this process the mental coin is flipped. With the correct information the coin is tossed differently, because you never toss a coin exactly the same way. In scenario 1 and 2 I therefore adjust 50:50. In scenario 3 no coin is tossed. Rather, if West is able to see that the odds are 75:25 in favor of the successful lead, he will always chose this. Therefore the adjusted score is 3nt-1. Karl

I can imagine situations where a defender with Kxx(xx)has a problem and needs to think in second hand, and therefore declarer has reason to believe the the defender holds the K if he thinks. But if the J is played from the hand and dummy holds AQT9, the possession of the K does not alter the expected latency of the defender, and if he needs a second more than usual, this is no valid clue for the declarer, unless the defender is a beginner. Karl

IMO a bidding card left on the table from the previous auction is not a call to the current auction, so South did not call and West called out of rotation, which was accepted by North's pass. Karl

According to Law 22A the auction has not ended yet. So it is East's turn to call now, and if he opens, the auction proceeds as normal. If, however, he passes again, Laws 34 and 17E2 take control: all passes except East's initial pass are removed, and it is South's turn to call. Some amount of UI has been generated by the removal of the passes (Law 16D). Karl