dburn

You might like to ask the WBFLC whether or not bidding boxes are legal. After all, they are an aid to a player's memory of how the auction has proceeded.

Yes. Sven can confirm that it is not, because it would be an aid to a player's calculation. I can confirm that it is, because Law 78D says that it is. I realise that this will not assist you very much, but I cannot help that. Law 78 says no such thing. My version of the Laws contains Now, this does not mean "the Director should hide them until he thinks the contestants need them", which is what some people seem to think should happen with the scoring table. It means "they should be available to contestants".

I am not sure I place very much faith in the notion of "general" Laws and "specific" Laws, and which of them should "prevail" in a given case. To my way of thinking, every Law is as valid as every other Law, and if two Laws are in apparent conflict then one of them should be changed. Moreover, I do not believe that telling a player what the score is for down four doubled non-vulnerable actually is a violation of Law 40C3a. That Law says (in effect) that you can't look at your own system during the auction, nor can you write down what cards have appeared during the play, nor can you use a slide rule to calculate the chance of a 4-3 break, nor can you look up an end position in Clyde E Love's Bridge Squeezes Complete. But it doesn't say that you aren't allowed to be told at the table what Law 1 says, nor any other Law that you happen either to have forgotten or never to have known.

Yes. Sven can confirm that it is not, because it would be an aid to a player's calculation. I can confirm that it is, because Law 78D says that it is. I realise that this will not assist you very much, but I cannot help that.

do you reply: [a] No I am not allowed to tell you that, because it would be an aid to your memory - why don't you bid it and find out? This discussion could be more meaningful with a meaningful example. I certainly hope that no bridgeplayer having passed their first hour of lessons should ever be in doubt about a 1♦ bid following a 1♥ bid being illegal. A more relevant question is what the director should answer to for instance the following question asked during the auction: "What are the scores for 4♠ doubled not vulnerable down 4 versus 4♥ vulnerable just made?" I do hope you will agree that this question is improper and should not be answered? I am getting rather fed up with the tactic constantly employed by bluejak, pran and other High Priests of the Cult of the Director, who when they encounter an example that runs counter to what they believe, dismiss it as a "meaningless" or "silly" example. Either a player is allowed to consult the Director (or some other source) as to what the Laws are during play, or he is not. It is not - it cannot be - the case that players are allowed to ask for information about some Laws but not others. Nor can it be the case, depsite what Cult members say, that a player is only allowed to find out what the Laws are when he (or someone at his table) has just broken them. If I am allowed to ask "does an ace beat a king?" then I am allowed to ask whether down four not vulnerable scores more or less than a vulnerable four hearts. Since I believe it to be the Director's duty to advise players of their rights and responsibilities under the Laws, I believe that if a Director is called and asked whether an ace beats a king, he is bound to reply "Yes" and not "I can't tell you that because it would be a memory aid". I also believe (therefore) that if a Director is called and asked what the score would be for a particular result, he should answer correctly. Of course, no player ever actually would call the Director and ask whether an ace beats a king. But that does not matter; if as the Cult continually asserts it is true of some Law X that "no player is expected to memorize Law X", then it is true of all Laws X, including those relating to the rank of the cards and the scoring table. Otherwise, it really would be necessary to compile guidance for players detailing what Laws they are expected to remember and what Laws they are not expected to remember. Bluejak's burblings above miss this perfectly serious and valid point in the interests of dismissing as silly any perfectly sound and valid argument to the effect that he is wrong.

Of course the Laws do not entitle you to have the ramifications of an irregularity explained to you when there has not been an irregularity. After all, how could they? But just so that I can be clear about what is actually being asserted, suppose that you as a Director are called to a table and asked whether it is legal to respond one diamond to an opening bid of one heart. Having particular regard to Law 81C2: do you reply: [a] No I am not allowed to tell you that, because it would be an aid to your memory - why don't you bid it and find out?

No, I can't. To me there is no difference, and to me this assertion: is nonsense. A player may or may not be allowed to "look up the Laws himself"; as far as I am concerned he can do so if he is able, because he is entitled to know them even - nay, especially - if he is not expected to memorize them. But if a player calls the Director and asks what a Law - any Law at all - says, the Director should tell him and not hold that the player is in breach of anything whatsoever. To assert otherwise is to assert that the Laws of bridge are unauthorized information to the players, and not even a Director would assert that.

Vanishingly unlikely. I am never awake at eight o'clock. But your confusion is a completely natural one, shared by (in my estimation) a very large majority of the bridge-playing public. The simplest way to express the current legal position may be this: You open 1NT with a twelve count, thinking due to a temporary aberration that you are playing 10-12 (you are an adventurous soul with a propensity to forget the vulnerability, usually but not always a recipe for disaster). As soon as your bidding card hits the table, and before anything else happens at all, you realise that you have erred - you are actually playing 15-17 at these colours. Your partner announces "15-17" and raises to 2NT. Despite the fact that you know already, without the extraneous information, that you have in effect opened 1NT with a sub-sub-minimum, you are in duty bound to act as though you knew this solely because of the extraneous information, and to raise to 3NT with the maximum that you momentarily thought you had when you opened the bidding. Otherwise, Directors and Appeals Committees would have to accept as a defence to the charge of using UI the plea "I wasn't using UI - I knew what I'd done as soon as I did it". I hope you can see that the game would become pretty much unplayable if that were ever acceptable, even though in a significant number of cases it may actually have been true. This position seems unnaturally harsh when compared to the position in which you would find yourself if screens were in use. Then, you would be at liberty to pass 2NT because you would know that this was the right thing to do - you would have no extraneous information on which to base your decision. But the unpalatable (and to some illogical) truth of the matter is this: if you have extraneous information that "could demonstrably suggest" a course of action to you, then you will be deemed to have acted as if it were solely the extraneous information that actually did suggest the course of action to you, and not any (authorized) information already in your possession before the extraneous information was provided. The fact that you looked at your clock will not matter to gordontd: as soon as I told you the time, you were no longer at liberty to act as if you knew the time from some other source. I should add as a parenthesis that I should be very hurt indeed if when I told you the time, you looked at your clock anyway. Is this any basis on which to conduct a relationship that involves us waking up together in the morning? So much for the general case. In the specific case under discussion, I am not entirely clear in my own mind as to whether partner's announcement of "12-14" after my opening bid of 1♠ may trigger a chain of events that permits me to change my call under the present Law 25A. At present I am inclined to the view that it does not, but I could very well be wrong.

If I am allowed to ask the Director what the ramifications are of an established revoke, why am I not allowed to ask the Director what the ramifications are of going four down doubled non-vulnerable? At the time, the Director (one of England's very best and an occasional poster to this forum) considered that he should not tell me the ramifications of the established revoke expressly because to do so would constitute an aid to my memory, calculation or technique. Since he didn't actually need to tell me anyway, the point was not pursued. But it remains the case in my view that if a player wants to know what the Laws say about anything at all, he is entitled to know what they say, and any attempt to find out what they say cannot be considered a breach of Law 40C3a or of anything else. If as pran remarks "no player is expected to have the laws memorized", then if players are expected to abide by the Laws, they should have unrestricted access to them at all times. Anything else is so at variance with the principles of natural justice as to be completely absurd - it's not only strange, it's also false.

Call the TD? Better not do that - he will read you the Riot Act, the relevant chapter of which is in this case: Of course, as blackshoe correctly observes, I must continue to act as though partner had responded 2♦ to 1♠ and not to 1NT; at my first legal opportunity (see above) I will correct his explanation, but not before. The point is this: you are not allowed to use information from your partner's alerts, explanations, failures to alert, misexplanations, or the like in any way. If you misbid (by which I mean "accidentally make a bid that does not accord with partnership agreement, because you have forgotten the agreement") you may not be woken up to the fact that you have done so by your partner's extraneous actions. Similarly, if you mispull a card from the bidding box you may not be woken up to the fact that you have done so by your partner's extraneous actions.

In the final of the Tollemache some years ago (enough years ago that the event was played under the 1997 Laws and not the most recent code), I was in a no-play game. My RHO ruffed a spade at trick n and I overruffed, then at trick n+2 my RHO produced the ace of spades when his partner led that suit. The Director was summoned, and he instructed that play should continue with the revoke established. He did not inform me that if I were to ruff the ace of spades, the penalty would be one trick (and I would go one down after that penalty was imposed), while if I discarded my remaining loser on the ace of spades, the penalty would be two tricks (and I would make the contract after that penalty was imposed). Fortunately for the London team I already knew this. I discarded my loser, I made the contract, and our team won a tournament it would not have won had I not been able to remember the Laws. Is the contention here that had I not known the relevant Law in detail but had been able to recall vaguely that the penalty would be different depending on whether or not I let the ace of spades hold, I would not have been entitled to have Law 64A2 read to me? If so, that contention is in my humble and considered opinion complete and utter balderdash.

Suppose that you really do open 1♠ and partner announces "12-14" before responding 2♦. What are your legal responsibilities in this case?

I am not sure I fully understand the problem here. Whether or not the announcement constitutes UI to the opener that he has misbid, it certainly constitutes UI to the opener that his partner has hearts and not diamonds. Thus, if he has for example: ♠AQJxx ♥xx ♦Kxxx ♣Kx he is in duty bound to "raise" diamonds, not to rebid 2♥.

I am not quite sure what this question means, but I will try to clarify my earlier remarks. Law 15C holds that: This was (obviously) intended to cover a situation in which the wrong East-West pair sits down at a table, starts the auction, and is then displaced by the right East-West pair. That is: the "wrong" auction is nipped in the bud, the "right" pair sits down and, as long as the "wrong" auction is faithfully reproduced until the point at which the "wrong" East-West pair left the table, play is allowed to continue "normally". But there is no particular reason that Law 15C should not apply to the circumstances in the original post (and to the situation I have quoted above, which is for practical purposes the same thing, for the "wrong" East-West pair will meet the board later in the event): East-West have started an auction on board 11 at a table where they are not due to play board 11; when they arrive at the table where they are due to play board 11, the Director proceeds as instructed by Law 15C; if the Director (having informed all concerned of their rights and responsibilities) deems that "normal" play of board 11 is possible in these circumstances, the result obtained as a result of that normal play will stand. The last sentence of Law 15C was (obviously) intended to prevent Larry Cohen (who first, or at any rate first publicly, drew attention to a grievous flaw in the previous version of the Laws) from opening 7NT on a balanced four count and thereby ensuring that because the auction differed from that at the wrongly-constituted table, he would receive an average plus. This is only peripherally relevant to the present case - I mention it chiefly for the sake of context, but it should be noted that if East-West arrived on the last round with a 65% game at the "right" table for playing board 11 and opened 7NT to ensure an average plus, a dim view of this could legally be taken. Well, East-West have eventually arrived at the table where they are due to meet board 11. One hopes that the Director said to them before they left the "wrong" table that "you can play this board later subject to the constraints of Law 15C, so don't discuss it in the meantime". If the Director knows or suspects that they have discussed it in the meantime, he should rule that they have and have used UI. He cannot so rule under Law 16C, because that discussion was not "accidental" (although the circumstances that gave rise to it were), but he can rule under Law 16B2 and under Law 73B; he can also apply a penalty under Law 90B8 for failure to comply with instructions of the Director. In short: I do not think Law 16C applies to any post facto discussion of the board by East-West - sure, it applies to the auction they had at the "wrong" table, but if that UI does not prevent normal play of the board at the "right" table, it is of no consequence (for so says Law 15C). If East-West arrive at the "right" table 90 minutes (or 90 years) after they played board 11 at the "wrong" table, and if they have not discussed board 11 in the interim, and if the auction until the point at which East-West left the "wrong" table is identical at the "right" table from that conducted at the "wrong" one, then they can play board 11. If not, they cannot - but if they attempt to sabotage the auction in order to achieve an artificial adjusted score instead of the "normal" result, they are subject to penalty. I still do not understand the original question. If I have not answered it, I apologise and await clarification as to its meaning in terms I can grasp.

I don't think anyone would deliberately bid six diamonds. But I could easily imagine someone intending to bid six clubs, and bidding six diamonds by mistake. Mind you, I would find it hard to imagine someone who bid six diamonds by mistake not saying afterwards that this was what he had done. Hard but not impossible - if six diamonds made when six clubs would have failed, and if the person in question judged that he might gain a psychological advantage by keeping his own counsel about his reasons for bidding as he did... I am a very late comer to this thread, but I have heard it all before, and so had the bard who wrote: Nothing is more ungentlemanly than Exaggeration causing needless pain. It's worse than spitting, and it stamps a man - Quite properly - with other men's disdain. 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. Hilaire Belloc, Ballade of Gentlemanly Feeling and Railway Strikes

I imagine that Law 16C might apply: When East-West arrive at the table at which they are due to play board 11, both of them have the UI that when they started to play it at the wrong table, the auction began in a particular way. The Director having been duly notified, he proceeds as follows: This appears to me to legitimize the following decision by the Director: the play of board 11 may continue at the correct table provided that the auction begins in the same way, and provided that he is satisfied that East-West have no other extraneous information about the board. This involves what physicists would call a "time-reversed" application of Law 15C; whether or not such an application is actually legitimate is not clear to me, but as a practical matter I see no objection to it in principle. If the Director knows or suspects that East-West have discussed the board in the 90 minutes before they are due to play it, this is not covered by Law 16C (because that UI has not been generated accidentally but deliberately). That is: if East-West attempt to play board 11 with foreknowledge over and above that occurring from the aborted auction at the "wrong" table, they may in the worst case be held in breach of various sections of Law 73, not excluding Law 73B2 ("the gravest possible offence"). As a previous correspondent remarked, if I were North-South when this East-West pair arrived to play board 11 having had 90 minutes in which they could have (not, of course, that they would have) discussed it, I would object most strongly. There appears to me to be no Law under which the Director is obliged to sustain my objection: if he is convinced that normal play of the board at my table may be possible, he may allow play to commence and to proceed to a conclusion if he finds nothing untoward. I do not know of any other Laws that might be concerned. If I were a Director, I'd probably judge that if East-West had nothing that could affect whether or not North-South at the "right" table could get a good result or a bad one entirely under their own steam I would let the board play; but if East-West had anything at all that left them able to influence the result I would not. But I am not a Director, so I do not judge cases on their merits (since after all, most cases have none). I just try to work out what the Law says.

Opps have bid and raised diamonds to the 3 level and North has JTxx, he isn't worrying that South might have Qxx on this hand whatever their takeout doubles might look like in general. Perfectly true. Apologies for previous nonsense.

Perhaps, but depending on partnership style one player should far more clearly have bid it than the other. If, as very many good players can nowadays, South can double 1♦ even opposite a passed partner with ♠Axxx ♥Axx ♦Qxx ♣Axx, then North should not bid 4♥ (even three might go down, losing two diamonds and a ruff and a trick in each major). If South can't double 1♦ with that, then North should have bid game and gets 100% of the blame; if South can double 1♦ with that, then South should have bid game and gets 100% of the blame. If the partnership doesn't know whether South can double 1♦ with that, then they both should have bid game and both get 100% of the blame, and are enjoined to talk to one another every so often.

Well, it seems that "the modern style" is to open 1♠, or 2♠, or 3♠, or 4♠. Faced with all this, the original poster may decide that spending even more time away from the game is a reasonable option. I, who play many different systems with many different partners, would open: 2♠ opposite those with whom I play 2♦ as a bad weak two in a major and 2M as a constructive weak two; 1♠ opposite those with whom I play 2♠ as the only way to show a hand with a six-card suit too weak for an opening bid of one; 3♠ opposite nobody at all (how in the name of mercy can it be right to open 3♠ with this and also with such as ♠KJ10xxxx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣x, which to me looks routine at favourable vulnerability?); and 4♠ only with a partner and a pair of team-mates fully prepared to have me do all the masterminding for our side (and even so I consider the bid so absurd that I still could not bring myself to make it). In essence, to open this hand at the three or four level is to insult everyone at the table but particularly partner, since it takes his judgement completely out of the game. Sure, it could work this time. But in the long run, it's pretty shocking bridge to have a hand so far removed from partner's expectations that if ever he has a decision to make in the later auction, he is almost bound to make the wrong one.

That fine compendium The Bridge Players' Encyclopaedia has this to say about Drury: The age of this contribution may be gauged from the fact that nowadays almost no one with the first hand and not everyone with the second would be in the position of responding to a third-seat opening, but the position is fairly clear: Drury as invented by Douglas A. of that ilk did not show a fit, and there is no particular reason for anyone learning only that 2♣ is Drury to assume even nowadays that it does.

I haven't been away from the game for any length of time at all, but I'm also wondering what the modern style is.

Not to rub it in, just resulting; it seems I was right, the hand was not one where declarer-skills mattered a lot. :D On the contrary - there were those who regarded the trump position as "just a guess" as to which opponent might have four to the jack. Some of those went two down by cashing the king and queen first, finding North with four to the jack. Of course, it would not have helped them to find South with four to the jack, since they could not then ruff their club loser in the dummy even if the club finesse had worked. However, it remains generally the case that you should not overbid just because you play the hands better than the rest of the field. If you can diagnose that a slam (or a game) will be significantly less than even money, you should simply not bid it rather than bid it and hope partner can make it.

I say (and said) nothing regarding players who announce opening bids of 1♣ in accordance with ACBL regulations - my remarks were concerned only with opening bids of 1NT. If players seek an advantage by varying their announcements according to their intentions facing an opening bid of 1♣ - why, those players may be villains of the deepest dye, and it may be wise to shoot them dead on sight even if (as may transpire later) they aren't. I guess the trouble I have with all of this is the same as the trouble Jeff Rubens has with all of this. The Laws, and the Conditions of Contest, and everything else, are so constituted that in almost any marginal situation, whatever you do will offend someone else's sense of fair play. Apart from saying that they should not be so constituted, there is little one can do. Burn's 25th Law - "A call once made cannot be changed. Law 26..." - has even less chance of being implemented than Burn's Law 47 - "if you've played a card, you've played it, and no invocations whether or not they involve excrement can alter the fact". Still, if Ed is worried about people who behave in one fashion when intending to pass partner out in 1♣ and in another fashion when not so intending, he may have a case - or at any rate, a grievance. Maybe the hardest problem we face in teaching people how to play tournament bridge rather than bridge is this UI business. And maybe we can't solve it.

Wrote it? Not I - to the best of my knowledge, none of the purple prose in the green or yellow or orange or tangerine books coruscated from my pen (or, as it might be, sty). That is just as well, for people such as Grattan Endicott and David Stevenson and Frances Hinden are far better at writing this sort of thing than I am. For the curious, the regulation in question is 3E in the Orange Book. I don't propose to reproduce it here in full, but the minatory tone of the first sentence is typical: Actually, he should not and it does not. The entire rationale behind this absurd local regulation [ALR] is summarized somewhat diffidently (and justifiably so) in 3E4: In fact, the "example" that led to the creation of the ALR in the first place was lead-directing questions after Stayman, not after opening bids of 1♣. Not that it matters - nowadays, almost everyone knows not to cheat over either. Moreover, the current regulations wrt announcements and alerts have had the beneficial effect (often ignored by the naysayers) that it's very much harder to cheat when the opponents open a weak no trump or a nebulous club than it used to be, so that the primary reason for the ALR has more or less disappeared. The primary reason against it, though, has not. Suppose I have: ♠xxx ♥xxx ♦AKJ10x ♣xx and suppose LHO opens 1NT (announced as weak), partner passes, and RHO bids 2♦ (alerted by LHO). What should I do?

I am pleased to hear it. As I have remarked many times, the purpose of an alert (or an announcement) is not to conform to some set of regulations, but to tell the opponents what you are playing in case they don't know and can't guess. If, for example, you agree that a 1NT opening may contain a singleton but only if that singleton is a top honour, or only if that singleton is a club, then you should say so and no amount of regulation should prevent you from saying so. And if the good citizens of the United States have taken to saying so in defiance of some ludicrous piece of pettifoggery, then more power to their elbows and less power to those legislators unable to discern between their elbows and other parts of their anatomy.