dburn

...unless, of course, discouraged from doing so by some absurd local regulation.

I have an agreement with some of my partners to play transfers after an opponent overcalls 1NT. Originally we played these only after a "comic" 1NT (natural or weak and unbalanced), but then it occurred to me that it made sense to play them after a natural 1NT also (which it did - they have gained many matchpoints and IMPs over the years). If, then, you had been playing against me, 2♥ would have been a transfer which North would have forgotten to alert (because he would have forgotten that it applied). If you had been playing against Robin, then 2♥ would have been natural (and South would have misbid, but there would have been nothing to alert). Since I cannot tell from the actual post what the North-South agreement was, I cannot tell whether there has been an infraction (a misbid is not an infraction), and I cannot therefore say how I would rule. If 2♥ was by agreement a transfer, then East-West have been misinformed and may have been damaged; if 2♥ was by agreement natural, then there is nothing on which to rule.

Thanks, Sven. That is precisely the answer I expected from a first-class Director. Of course, it does not answer the question I actually asked, which was this: does the player with twelve spades and Mrs Bun have an incorrect number of cards? Or, to put the matter more realistically and to align it better with the question that began the entire business, does a player who sorts his hand thus: ♠AQ764 ♥J98 ♦7 ♣K863 have an incorrect number of cards if it turns out that both those black sixes are in fact the six of spades, while neither of them is the six of clubs? Again, try to concentrate on the question asked, and not on what you as a Director would do if the hand I have shown actually occurred at the table. Either the player with this hand has an incorrect number of cards or he does not, nicht wahr? Say which.

Curiously (or perhaps not curiously at all) the WBF Systems Policy does not define a "system", although from time to time it employs the spelling "System" in order to bamboozle people by creating a distinction without a difference. Thrown back upon the dictionary, the closest we can come to the term as used in bridge is that a "system" is: Now, if you so organize matters as to prevent your opponents from acting in a particular way, you are compelled by the Laws to disclose that you have done this. Of course, if you had to disclose it you might no longer want to do it, but this cannot be helped. Your best chance is to point out that a "system is also defined as: which might or might not cut the mustard, depending on the make-up of the Appeals Committee.

Not yet. But Mrs. Bun is about to be removed as per Law 13F, at which point I shall have an incorrect number. You have correctly counted your cards face down to ensure that you have been given exactly thirteen cards. Then when you look at your cards (the face sides) you discover that one of your cards is a bogus card. Of course you call the Director immediately and have your hand reconstructed before any damage could occur. The applicable Law is 13D, and so far nothing indicates that there is any player responsible for the irregularity. What is the problem? Do you seriously suggest, Sven, that a Director should look at a player's hand in the course of making a ruling?

Your hand contains twelve spades and Mrs Bun the Baker's Wife. Do you have an incorrect number of cards?

Sven, I know how to read. I also know that this statement: is false. If at one table in a match a deal is played with 52 cards, while at the other table the supposedly identical deal is played with 51 (or with 53), the deal is not necessarily cancelled because the deck at the second table did not conform to Law 1, which is therefore not necessarily "absolute". You really must get out of the habit of saying "such and such a Law applies only in case X." This means no more than "I apply this Law only in case X, because I haven't actually thought about what it means, nor about how it might apply in case Y".

One makes certain basic assumptions that may or may not seem reasonable. It would for example seem unreasonable to expect a player to attempt to restore the original state of his cards by planting a tree to replace the one cut down for the paper from which those cards were "originally" made. On the other hand, it would seem reasonable to expect a player to "restore" the (ideal) state of the hand he received - 13 cards in random order all face down - by shuffling his cards and returning them to the board all face down. If the Law does not make it clear that this is what he should do - why, the Law should be changed. Until then, if the Law at any rate suggests that this is what he should do, and if it would in any case be a sensible thing to do - why, he should do it. In the former case he can (after the Law is changed) be penalized for not doing it; in the latter case he cannot - but surely we do not play the game merely in order to irritate people by acting as obnoxiously as we can within the limits of the Laws. Do we? In passing, we may remark that deliberately returning your cards to the board with one or more of them face up might interfere with the enjoyment of the game of the players at the table next to play the board. This is contrary to Law 74A2, so that...

Well, bridge is a game and its Laws consist of words. Anyone who attempts to interpret those Laws is to that extent "playing word games"; his destination in the afterlife is a matter for the judgement of his Maker, to whom Laws 92 and 93 probably do not apply. But I assure you that I am being entirely serious. mjj29 raised this perfectly sensible question: and received short shrift from (among others) pran, who said: But this is a complete non sequitur, for the Law quoted below: expressly provides for the Director to use his judgement in at least one case of a deck that does not conform to Law 1, and rule that the difference does not matter. Moreover, Law 14 expressly provides for the Director to rule that a result obtained in at least one case of a deck that does not conform to Law 1 should stand as a "legitimate" result on the board (indeed, he may not rule that it should not). If "at least one", why not more than one?

Well, a deck with 51 cards does not conform to Law 1, and so "cannot be used to play a legitimate hand of bridge" - or can it? Why, yes it can. If for example the players bid and play and score with a deck of 51 (through no fault of their own - the duplimate machine ate the six of spades during its lunch break), then not only is the hand they play with it and the result they obtain on it "legitimate", but the poor fellow who played with twelve cards throughout may be deemed to have revoked. Of course, this is his fault for not counting his cards before he started to play them. But it is simply and incontrovertibly false to say, as you have said above, that "a deck that does not conform to Law 1 cannot be used to play a legitimate hand of bridge".

No, it isn't. If it were, then Laws 13 and 14 would not exist - or if they did exist, they would make no provision for play to continue in any circumstances whatsoever.

Not really. To "restore" is, among other things: If we consider the "original state" of the cards in the board to be that immediately following a deal performed in accordance with Law 6B, then there were thirteen of them in each pocket randomly ordered and all face down. It is that state to which they should be "restored" in accordance with Law 7C. Of course when that Law was written, instead of "restores them to the pocket..." the Lawmakers should have said "replaces them face down in the pocket..." Maybe one day the Laws will be written in English - but that will not constitute a restoration, merely a revolution.

Imagine the following: On board 1, West and South both have the six of spades (and no one has the six of clubs). At every table North opens seven hearts, passed out. East leads, South puts down the dummy, North spreads thirteen hearts face up and claims. Not until the board reaches table 2 on round 13 does West say "hang on a minute - South has the six of spades and so do I." How should this board be scored?

Oh, you simply announce "13-17". The fact that you will be 13-15 only if you do not have a four-card suit other than clubs is left for your opponents somehow to discover. The regulations do not permit them to do this very easily, if at all, but the purpose of alerting and announcing anything in England is to conform to the regulations, not to assist the opponents.

What happened to the method whereby we determined which of two tied teams had been most fixed by the VP scale? It was a long time ago, but I still vividly remember the last qualifier for the Four Stars final at Brighton being manually calculated by that method, which for the uninitiated worked as follows: One IMP was added to each team's score in every match, and the VP results were recalculated to produce a new ranking list - call this L1A. Then, one IMP was subtracted from each team's score, and the VP results were recalculated again to produce list L1B. Each team's VP scores from L1A and L1B were added, and if one team had a higher total than the other(s), that team was the winner. Otherwise, two IMPs were added as above to produce L2A, two IMPs subtracted to produce L2B, and the preceding step was repeated for the new ranking lists. Now that we have computers, it would take only a few minutes longer to split a tie by this method than it took Jim Proctor and Steve Barnfield working with pencil and paper all those years ago. And they had got to plus and minus 4 IMPs before the white smoke rose.

When I say that I am happy for my opponents to play whatever they like, it does not follow that I think there should be a regulation to the effect that everyone should be happy for the opponents to play whatever they like. I don't think that at all. As I have remarked elsewhere, I think that people who organise tournaments should be free to impose whatever restrictions they want to impose on the methods that may be played in those tournaments. If you don't like the restrictions, don't play in the tournaments. I also think it ridiculous for the organisers of any event billed as a World, or European, or English, or Outer Mongolian Championship to impose any restrictions at all on what people play in those tournaments. But, as above, they can if they want to - after all, no one is going to say "we won't play in the Bermuda Bowl if we can't play a strong pass". Moreover, although I believe that the USA currently hold only the World Championship For People Who Still Bid Like Your Auntie Gladys, there isn't any other World Championship for them to hold, and their achievement is as considerable as it could possibly be. Whatever you play, though, you must tell the opponents what it is. Because there are considerable restrictions on the methods we allow, it is just about possible to describe those methods in a way that can readily be understood by those who must play against them at short notice for a limited period of time. We should be (nay, we are) gradually relaxing those restrictions, but there are limits. If you want to play "1♣ shows 16+ balanced or 13+ unbalanced, but unbalanced 13-15 point hands will only be opened 1♣ if they conform to the Rule of 25", try asking us whether you may. No one has actually done that yet, and I don't know what our answer would be. But don't ask us "if we call our system a strong club, may we open 1♣ on some thirteen counts?" You may not.

For Swiss Teams events, it seems better to use neither total IMPs nor IMP quotient. Instead, break ties by adding together the VP scores of all the teams against whom each tied team has played. The team whose opponents have the highest collective score is the winner, because they played against "more difficult" opponents.

Sure. But if everyone gets "Not Played" on a board, that has the same effect as if everyone had played the board and done as well on it as they did on all the other boards combined. For example, the notional score on the board between pair A who finish with a 60% game and pair B who finish with a 40% game is 60% of a top to A, 40% of a top to B, which is (more or less) as it should be. If on the other hand everyone gets Average on the board, that has the same effect as if everyone had played the board and the board was completely flat - the same score was achieved at all tables. This means that the notional score on the board between pairs A and B is 50% of a top to each pair, which is emphatically not as it should be. If instead everyone gets Average Plus on the board, that produces an even more absurd result in terms of the notional score between A and B; moreover, it simply adds a number of matchpoints to the economy for no good reason at all.

Let me see if I have this right: to score a board as "Not Played" across the field is to attempt to score the board as if it had been played - that is, everyone receives their session average for that board, or the score they would probably have received had they played it; while to score a board by giving everyone "Average" is to attempt to score the board as if it had never existed; so that if you want to act as though a board had been played, you score it as Not Played, while if you want to act as though a board had not been played, you score it as if everyone had in fact played it (and obtained the same score on it).

If this is true they are disadvantaged by their own lack of preparation. Not really. You see, they need to know that there is something against which they should prepare. Whereas I don't mind my opponents opening 1♣ with any thirteen cards they happen to hold, I take considerable exception to their doing so under the guise of playing a "strong club system". They are not playing a strong club system - what they are actually doing is playing a system in which it is safer for them than it would otherwise be to open some horrible nine count, since partner will know that they did not open a "strong" club. Now, all that is also perfectly fine - if it's what you want to play, you should be allowed to play it. My experience with systems such as Magic Diamond, which is more closely defined than this New Precision in that it uses two nebulous openings rather than one for most hands better than a horrible nine count, is that they do not work. But I do not want to prevent you from playing a method that does not work - I just do not want you as a team-mate. What you should not be allowed to do, though, is go around confusing people into thinking that they should play their strong club defence against your "strong club system". They should not. But they will not know that they should not, and that is why we make the regulations we make. If you had to disclose your methods properly, they would fall foul of those regulations, and it is not open to you to attempt to circumvent this by calling your methods something that they are not. Of course Reese wouldn't open a 1=6=5=1 13-count a strong club. He knew what would happen if his opponents bid spades, and in those days (unlike these days) his opponents had to have spades before they could bid them.

Indeed. You have been known to be right, but after all, so is a stopped watch twice a day.

Yes, but bridge wasn't played on it. Suppose that on board 17 at table four, the players decided to amuse themselves by playing a game of Hearts rather than bridge. Would you consider this board to have been "played" at their table? Moreover, if scoring a board as "Not Played" results in the same score for the contestants as giving them an average (plus, minus or neither), what does it matter how the score is entered?

The following exchange between your humble servant and the WBF Chief Tournament Director may assist. From: David Burn [mailto:dalburn@btopenworld.com] Sent: 23 July 2010 12:35 To: Max Bavin Subject: Law 64C Ten minutes after the end of a session, I realise that an opponent revoked on a board. Assuming that the opponent will agree that he did so, can I get an adjusted score under Law 64C? David From: Max Bavin [max@ebu.co.uk] Sent: 23 July 2010 14:30 To: David Burn Subject: Law 64C Yes, most definitely. 64C exists no only to catch those revokes for which the automatic penalty is inadequate compensation, but also the 64B4/5 situations wherein there is no automatic penalty. You just need to be within protest time in order to apply 64C. Max

So that I can be clear in my own mind about what is being suggested here, is the notion that: my opponents revoke, but I do not realise this until it is too late to have the score adjusted by means of "rectification"; however, if I realise before the end of the Correction Period that a revoke has occurred, I can ask the Director to adjust the score anyway in order to "do equity"?

The point just before that at which the Director shuffles off this mortal coil and joins the choir invisible. What the Director can do about the revoke is, of course, quite another thing.