dburn

I don't think you're allowed to take your own call back just because you've forgotten to alert partner's. After all, if you'd remebered to do the latter, you would presumably not want to do the former.

Not only do you not have the hands, but you don't have the form of scoring and you don't have the vulnerability. Doubtless you are attempting to make some point or other, but whatever it is, it has nothing to do with bridge.

I confess myself baffled. "Acol" is a system based on a weak no trump and four-card majors - and therefore, four-card minors. If I sat down opposite a stranger who told me that he wanted to play "Acol with a strong no trump", then whatever he thought he meant by that, it would never occur to me that he intended 1♥-2♦-2NT as anything other than a weak no trump. Nor would it cross my mind that he would open 1♠ with 4-4 in the majors and a balanced hand. Of course, "Acol with a strong no trump" means that 2/1 responses are not what the founding fathers of Acol intended them to be - they must be prepared to play at least 2NT facing a weak no trump, instead of frequently being made on hands where opener's best chance of a plus score is probably to pass. But if I sat down against bluejak and he told me that his partnership used "Acol with a strong no trump", and then he opened 1♣ on a three-card suit "systemically", and then I messed up the defence because I played him for four clubs, I would certainly summon the constabulary and could save a great deal of judicial time by simultaneously summoning the executioner. Meanwhile: if in the original case West has said to East "we play double of a strong 1♣ as clubs and another, and East has said "fine", and West doubles a strong club on a 1=6=3=3 shape for reasons known only to himself and utterly unknown to East, then South has no recourse. Indeed, if West were to become declarer he would be under no obligation to tell the opponents before the opening lead that he might be 1=6=3=3 with a good hand; that is not part of his partnership's agreements. But the constabulary should take pains to convince itself that "utterly unknown to East" in the foregoing means precisely that.

Post deleted because it was in the wrong thread. Sorry.

It has always struck me as seriously wrong that Victory Points should be arbitrarily added to the economy because first the players cock something up and then the Director does. This is the bridge equivalent of quantitative easing ("printing money" for non-economists such as myself) and ought to be abolished. If the result after following the Laws regarding the assignment of IMPs after an adjusted score is a 23-10 win for one side, that ought to be adjusted to a 21-9 win (or a fractional adjustment if rounding errors lead to significant loss of equity, which in this case they do not). It is, for obvious reasons, unfair to the rest of the field for there to be more than 30 VPs at stake in one match when there are only 30 at stake in all the others.

Declarer's statement constitutes a line of play that it is possible to follow. Indeed, if North's non-ace spade were lower than the queen it would be the correct line - you should cash the ace of clubs and if the jack does not come down, you should take the club finesse. Since that is what declarer said he was going to do, that is what declarer will be considered to do, and the success or failure of the contract will depend on the club position - the spade position is not relevant. Doubtless declarer meant to say something else, and doubtless if there were no such thing as a claim declarer would not have played in this fashion, but I cannot help that. Neither can his opponents, and neither can the Director.

I can quite easily accept your interpretation of the word "information" and decide that the opening leader does have "unauthorised information". However, the phrase "about a board he is playing or has yet to play" seems very specific and whatever information he had did not fall into that category. If you overheard someone say "you should sacrifice, non vulnerable" and you thought a board being passed to you was that one, but it was actually one you had already played, would you penalise someone who successfully ventured a non-vulnerable sacrifice? Yes, of course. That which "informed" (in the archaic sense) his action was extraneous; the fact that the "information" (in the contemporary sense) did not relate to the board he was actually playing does not matter. Suppose that a player X is considering his opening lead on the final board (24 at his table) of a pairs tournament, and suppose that he hears someone remark "you should lead the ace of spades". Believing this remark to be addressed surreptitiouly to him by some well-wisher, he leads the ace of spades, and that defeats the contract while some other logically alternative lead would not have done. But the remark was not addressed to X - some fellow who had already played all the boards was telling his partner as they left the room what she should have done on board 17. Has X acted illegally? Yes, of course he has - he has allowed his choice of action from among logical alternatives to be extraneously "informed". That the datum "you should lead the ace of spades" had no bearing on board 24 is irrelevant; X has treated it as "information" by permitting it to "inform" his choice of play, and he is therefore in breach of Law 16A3 (and some others). You seem to me to be hung up on the notion that information about board 17 cannot be held to be information about board 24. You should not be; it is true that data about board 17 is (or, for the purists among us, are) not data about board 24, but as I have attempted to show (and as you appear to me to have accepted), that which informs our actions does not have to be a datum, let alone a fact. In short, as Robin may or may not have said a long while ago, Law 16A3 applies to this player's actions even though Law 16C1 does not apply to the "information" he has received. The score should be adjusted accordingly, despite the views of BLML (or perhaps because of them, although Eric Landau still talks a great deal of sense and Herman de Wael still talks).

3♥ might not be "normal" in the sense of being the theoretically correct call that a top player would make, but it is not very (or at all) "strange". If partner has a strong hand and RHO has six spades, partner's hand will often approximate to a takeout double of spades (for those who are not used to defending against the Multi, the best way to defend against all "pass-or-correct" bids is to play "penalty or takeout" doubles). If East has a strong hand with (probably) short spades and West has some values with four hearts, why shouldn't West bid his hearts? There hasn't been any infraction here other than South's arguing with the Director, but since he has presumably already been beheaded for this, this problem will not recur.

No, but it matters whether there is actually any "information" at all. In the present case, it is being argued that a man with information regarding board x cannot be held in breach of Law if he applies the information regarding board x to board not-x, however successfully he does so. In the general case, it may be argued that a player who would not take action x if he knew his partner's hand cannot be held to have taken action x because of information about his partner's hand, thus has not breached any Law. The trouble is that "information" is an ambiguous term. Originally, "information" was that which "informed" (that is: shaped - "formed" - or influenced) the way in which people behaved; it did not matter whether the "information" actually corresponded with reality. Thus, a man who bids 3NT on a minimum after 1NT-slow 2NT is "informed" by his partner's tempo, whether or not his partner's tempo is itself "informed" by anything in his partner's hand. In that sense, one may rule against the player under Law 16 if 3NT happens to make - as indeed one frequently does so rule. But that definition is nowadays close to obsolete. In the normal run of events, one distinguishes among "data" on the one hand and "information" on the other by regarding the former as potentially false or meaningless, and the latter as true (or at any rate, corresponding with some putative reality held for convenience to be true). Specifically in bridge, one speaks of "misinformation" as distinct from "information" in saying that if a player is told something that is not true about an opposing partnership's agreements, that player is entitled to redress if he has done something deleterious as a result; while if he is told the truth about the agreements (though not necessarily about the cards the opponents hold), he is not. Thus, in times gone by "information" was merely that upon which someone acted - it did not matter at all whether the basis of the action was factual. Nowadays, one regards "information" as to some extent a measurable quantity conforming to a factual state of affairs - the field of information theory, and the terms "misinformation" and "disinformation" attest to this. The Laws of bridge use the term indiscriminately in both senses, to the detriment of clarity but (perhaps, though not always) to the benefit of justice. The confusion between the archaic and the contemporary senses of the term "information" actually works fairly well for the practical purposes of administering the game of bridge (though I should stress that this is a fluke; different formulations of the Laws would work better in terms of making it clear to players what they should and should not do). It works better still when combined with such splendid but semantically useless phrases as "could demonstrably suggest", because anyone with half a brain can demonstrate that almost anything could or could not suggest almost anything else; so that the bridge world can for some decades yet pursue the Kaplan Model: "if someone has done something undesirable, there almost certainly exists an interpretation of Law under which he should not have done it". In the present case, the guy who underled his solid clubs on board x even though he knew only that it was the right defence on some board either x or not-x, and it happened to be the right defence on both boards x and not-x, was "informed" in the archaic sense to underlead his solid clubs on some board or other, and should be ruled against just as if he had been "informed" in the contemporary sense that board x was the board on which it was right. In the general case, the man who bid 3NT on a minimum should similarly be ruled against, for if you hesitate, you get shot. You may not think that this is a particularly equitable state of affairs, but I cannot help that. It is the Law.

This is not clear to me at all. If the player realised only as a result of his partner's action (alert, announcement, whatever) that he had misbid, then as far as I can see he may not apply to change his call under Law 25A.

Common sense should always be an adequate answer. "Common sense" is one of those well-known oxymorons, like "military intelligence". Particularly at bridge, what is sensible is not common, and what is common is not sensible.

The question of whether or not a player commits an infraction is invariably vexed. To give another example: A player opens 1NT with a poor to average 15 count; his partner raises slowly to 2NT and he bids 3NT. This is an execrable contract, because his partner was wondering whether to pass 1NT with his eight count, not whether to bid 3NT. But three finesses and a couple of 3-3 breaks later, nine tricks are made. Now, has this player committed the infraction of using UI? Obviously not, because his partner's tempo gave him no information at all about his partner's hand - if it had done, he would never have bid game. Where there is no information, there can be no unauthorised information; yet I suppose there is no Director or Committee in the world who would not adjust this result to 1NT making three. Various attempts to resolve this difficulty have produced nothing that makes any sense at all; appeals to such principles as "rub of the green" on the one hand and "natural justice" on the other are equally foolish. Pity the poor fellow with a sixteen count - if he passes and his partner was thinking about raising to 3NT which fails, he may very well have his score adjusted to 3NT down one, such is the desire to punish by score adjustment felonies and misdemeanours that ought to be punished by disciplinary penalty, and to aver that a man who has obtained a good result in an irregular fashion must be guilty of something, even though no one actually knows what.

Oh, there are those at the highest levels who also cheat like fury, and it is not to be supposed that the authorities' ban on "dual-message" carding was motivated by a desire to protect only the lower levels. Rightly has Bob Hamman condemned the Smith Peter as a licence to practice what Edgar Kaplan called "Black Magic". The trouble is, of course, that as theoretically sound methods employed by honest experts make their way into the mainstream, perfectly honest but less expert players wishing to adopt such methods will do so with enthusiasm until they have the seven, three and two of spades and want a heart lead from partner. Then, they will... well, they're not cheating with that slow ♠2, merely coming to terms with the notion that the method does not actually always work. And if partner plays a heart anyway - well, maybe he worked that out all by himself. Maybe not, though. For well it was said by the bard: Weigh human actions carefully. Explain The worst of them with charity. Mayhap There were two sides to that affair of Cain, And Judas was a tolerable chap.

It seems to me important to understand why it is that methods of the kind being discussed here are discouraged (or even criminalized) by the authorities. Suppose that your spades are the seven, the five and the three. And suppose that in leading a spade, or in following suit to partner's lead of a spade, you wish to suggest that partner play a non-spade at his next turn to lead. Unfortunately, if you play an odd spade to the current trick this will encourage partner to play a non-non-spade at his next turn to lead. This is a pity, because you do not have any even spades. Instead, your spades may be the seven, the five and the two. At least you can prevent partner from playing a spade at his next turn to lead - the two will dissuade him from doing that. Unfortunately, you would rather he played a heart and not a diamond at his next turn to lead, but the two of spades will not achieve this. Life would be a great deal easier if every time you had three low spades they were the eight, the five and the two - but unfortunately, life is not always like that. You must make the best of the cards you are dealt, so what are you to do? Well, you or I would accept the cards Fate had dealt us, play a "wrong" spade in tempo and watch partner mess up the defence as usual. But certain people who are not you or I adopted a different approach: they played a "wrong" spade rather more slowly than they would have played a "right" spade if only they had one. Hence, a fast ♠2 would get a diamond lead from partner while a slow ♠2 would get a heart lead from partner as often as (indeed, more often than) not. Rather than permitting such practices to go unchecked, the powers that be decided to remove temptation from the ungodly - chiefly because the godly would for the most part not even realise that they had been swindled. As usual, in so doing the powers that be restricted the creativity of the honest expert in favour of protecting the honest toiler from the machinations of the dishonest one. And as usual, the remedy for this undesirable state of affairs lies in creating different regulations for different classes of game. In the Bermuda Bowl or the Venice Cup you should be allowed to play whatever carding methods (and indeed bidding methods) you like, subject to full disclosure and maintenance of perfect tempo. At lower levels, you should not.

Here is why 5♣ is a bad idea: [hv=d=w&v=e&n=sak83h9543dkqj52c&w=s975haq876da96cak&e=sqj1042hk10d8743c83&s=s6hj2d10cqjt976542]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] The passers will go down two in 2♦. The 3♣ bidders will go down one or two in 4♣, but they won't be doubled. The opponents can make a part score. None of this is really all that surprising after the auction begins as it has begun. I had some sympathy with our team-mates, because at their table West began with a strong club, North showed spades and diamonds and any strength, and East showed some values, so South hadn't much idea what the right approach was. Minus 500 did not compare well with minus 110 at our table when 3♣ (which was not forcing) was passed out and allowed to make, but it wouldn't have compared very well with plus 50 either. In the natural auction given, however, if 3♣ is forcing then pass is indeed a "no-brainer". I reserve judgement as to the quantity of brains required to play 3♣ as showing a diamond fit, but I express no such reservations regarding a jump to 5♣. As Jeremy Flint so aptly put it, why squeal before you are hurt?

I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair. Would have thought the chorus more appropriate for a bridge tournament, especially a matchpoint event:

A thought experiment. You open a strong club, partner responds 1♠ showing 5+ spades and 8+ hcp. Your hand is such that you wish to discover whether or not partner has a diamond control, and if so of what nature - perhaps you have ♠AKQ32 ♥A ♦AQJ1098 ♣A The following cunning plan occurs to you: you will bid 2♠ to ask about trumps, then you will bid 3♦ to ask about diamonds, then if partner shows second-round control, you will bid 4♦ to ask whether that is the king or a singleton. After all, that is what C C Wei invented the system for all those years ago, and after all it's matchpoints - it would be nice to be the only pair in the room in 7NT facing ♦K, would it not? Well, you bid 2♠. Partner alerts, explains on request that this asks about spades, and bids 3♣ showing five spades to one top honour - ace, king or queen. Now, you know that he hasn't got five spades to one top honour. But you also know that he knows your bid was an asking bid, which significantly increases the chance that he will know that your next bid is also an asking bid. Maybe he will cock up the responses to that also, but you might as well proceed with your plan - after all, maybe he won't. Perhaps he thought the jack of spades was a top honour. You bid three diamonds, he alerts and explains that this asks about diamonds, he bids 3NT (second round control), you bid four diamonds (a repeat ask, but he does not alert because this is above 3NT), he bids four spades (♦K). You bid 7NT, and you get your top. The opponents, educated citizens, complain. "If", they tell the TD, "there was a screen, or if as he properly should have done the opening bidder had taken no notice at all of his partner's alerts and explanations, the opening bidder might not have concluded that his 3♦ bid would be - nay, had been - correctly interpreted on the next round. He might have concluded instead, given the response to 2♠, that his partner had forgotten altogether about asking bids, and he might have settled for some other way of bidding his hand that might not have resulted in a final contract of 7NT." You are the TD, and you rule that...? These are actually very deep waters, and they are important. As Jan's resident expert on the Laws correctly says, a confirmation that partner knows the system - whether in whole or in part - really is UI, and really can demonstrably suggest a course of action that might not have been taken in the absence of that UI. Moreover, the question of whether or not you can do something demonstrably suggested by UI when the logical alternatives are counter-indicated by AI is one that has never been satisfactorily resolved. It should be.

One could, of course, commandeer the letters from "g" to (or, as they say in Barbarian, through) "v" as extensions to the hexadecimal notation and use base 32 instead. That way, s4 is AKQxxxx and t3 is AKQ10xxx. A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary)

More or less. The sticking point is this splendid part of Law 16B: Since nobody at all has any idea what this means, the question of whether "expected alerts" are AI is unresolved (just because unexpected alerts are UI, expected alerts are not necessarily AI - the principle of exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis is unknown to the WBFLC). But the truth is that anything partner does apart from making a legal call or play is UI to you - including, pace richlp, alerting when he is supposed to alert and telling the opponents what you are actually playing. For all that, if someone in the given position bid 4♠ on the given auction, it would be difficult to show that he had infringed any Law. Maybe he had three little diamonds - a holding which is not yet illegal, though I suppose some authorities might try to ban it on humanitarian grounds.

This is what was going on. [hv=d=e&v=n&n=skq3hjdqj2ca86542&w=s1074hq43d984cq1093&e=sa92hk1098765d73c7&s=sj865ha2dak1065ckj]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] On the third round of diamonds, East actually discarded a spade - and West discarded a club. Before anyone played to the next trick, however, West discovered that he still had a diamond. So West played his diamond, and his club became a major penalty card. South thereupon played a spade to dummy's king and East's ace and, as was his legal right, required East to lead a club. Because East still had a club, declarer now made the rest, but if East had discarded that club on the third round of diamonds, he would have been at liberty to cash his remaining hearts. No, I don't know why declarer played the hand as he did - it would seem normal to cross to dummy in diamonds and play a club to the jack, thus going down four. But perhaps South considered the club finesse a lesser chance compared to playing RHO for ignorance of basic safety plays to guard against partner being about to revoke. And who is to say that he was wrong?

What? I ask a question when, after I opened a weak no trump and partner passed a 2♣ overcall, it is more or less certain that I cannot possibly be interested in the answer? As you know perfectly well, a 1NT opener might easily bid on this sequence. Please do not be too childish. Yet again, we have a problem where you have the sort of mind to make meaningful and useful input. Playing little mindgames instead demeans you. I can make no picture at all in my mind of a hand that would open a weak no trump, hear an ostensibly natural 2♣ overcall to its left, hear a pass from partner and a 2♥ bid to its right, and want to take some action other than pass. If you tell me that I "know perfectly well a 1NT opener might easily bid again on this sequence", you are grievously in error - what would you have me bid, after all? I am not in the habit of opening a weak no trump with an unbalanced hand including five or more spades, and neither is anybody else, so I probably won't bid 2♠. But perhaps I should bid my six-card minor, without which no one opens a weak no trump these days. Of course, partner has promised no more than a balanced Yarborough, so it is entirely possible that any bid by me might go for 1400. If this happens, I hope you will not mind my referring to you as a respected authority for the view that a (weak) 1NT opener "might easily bid again on this sequence". The point I am trying to make, and it is a serious point, is that "puzzled, you ask" is presumably a joke. Whatever answer you receive cannot affect your action at this turn, so you have per the Absurd Local Regulation no business in asking. Still, if I am allowed to ask questions because I am "puzzled", that will give me some more ammunition against the Absurd Local Regulation. I am invariably puzzled by everything, so I will always ask about anything that may be perplexing me. Moreover, I will always ask about an alerted call to my right, because that's the least I can do given the ALR. Your mileage, as I believe they say, may vary. Could have sworn there was a serious question in there somewhere. What was it? Ah, yes - "is the fact that East (assuming South opened 1NT, West bid 2♣ and North passed) bid 2♥ AI to West given that if 2♣ had been alerted, North would have acted in such a way that East would not have bid 2♥?" No.

Obviously declarer does not have six diamonds. You may originally have formed that impression from the fact that partner has shown two diamonds, but in reality he has three. That being so, there is a danger you might (in theory, but not in practice) have anticipated... This wasn't a matchpoint problem, mikeh - the conditions are exactly as I have given them. In truth, it wasn't a problem at all at the table - nobody would really discard ♣7 for any reason at all, let alone the actual (and only) reason why that discard alone would defeat the contract. But here is a box, and here is some space outside the box in which you are at liberty to think. Or not, as it pleases you.

I am not sure that bidding three of a suit to play is the best way to make them suffer - I think that might make it easier in some ways for them to know that they should compete. There are so many defences to 1NT floating around that I have lost track of them all. Fortunately, the methods I prefer to play do not require me to keep track of any of them. These involve simply treating responder's double of an overcall as takeout of the suit overcaller has bid, not necessarily the suit or suits he has shown. If the intervention was 2♣, any bid means what it would have meant had the overcall been a pass ("system on", in other words). If the intervention was some other bid, then two of a suit is natural and non-forcing, 2NT and higher are transfers.

Well, you have all been good sports, and maybe this problem as originally set was too tough. Still, I am sure you can solve it with this additional clue: declarer has the king of clubs.

Interesting answers, these, and I have no wish to comment on the theoretical or practical merits of any of them - merely to pose the second part of the problem, which is this: The only discard from your hand to defeat the contract is the seven of clubs (no one so far has actually discarded this, so you all start again on an equal footing). Why will only this discard suffice?