dburn

You, East, hold ♠None ♥xxxx ♦xxxx ♣xxxxx West opens the bidding with a constructive weak two bid in spades, North passes. What action do you take? Well, you should pass after (say) ONE MINUTE. Then, when South with ♠A ♥Qxxx ♦KJ10x ♣QJ8x passes also, you will incur only a procedural penalty instead of the rather larger penalty you would have incurred had you not chea... er, had you not failed to fulfil your obligations under the Laws. There shouldn't be any split scores. North-South should be given plus 650; East should be read whatever the Danish is for the Riot Act; and South should not play poker for a living. Fortunately, at the bridge table he does not have to.

True, and also because his results require certain assumptions about the complexity of the structure being modelled which do not apply here. Do you mean to say that bridge players are incapable of first-order arithmetic? (Not that I would necessarily disagree if you did, for in my experience most theorems about bridge are ineffectively generated, but still...)

3♣ is not "really invitational". I assure you that anyone at TGRs would bid the same way with ♠xx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣xxxxxx (just as I am sure you would playing for money or even for matchpoints facing a weak no trump - important to start bidding before the opponents do, and lucky to have this sequence available because it is the most likely to stop LHO bidding for one round at least). As to how I would rule in the actual case, I don't know, because I don't know what happened in the actual case. Whatever the actual North-South agreements, South on not hearing his partner's non-alert of 2NT is supposed to bid as though the auction had proceeded 1NT-2NT (may be very weak with diamonds) - 3NT (from a North who knows that South may be very weak with diamonds). Whether South did or did not so proceed, or how South should or should not have proceeded, is unclear. As I said, I'd have passed, but on reflection maybe I should bid five diamonds. What I cannot do (and what I would stake my life that the actual South did) is bid four diamonds and fold up my cards. After all, systemically 2NT could also be strong with diamonds, so 4♦ might be a slam try without a club control, might it not? It is a capital mistake to theorize without data, and until the OP gives us some more data I will not theorize further. But I bet that after all was said and done, North had some UI also.

A thought: if you allow 4♦, in what circumstances would you allow North to pass it?

Happened only the other day at TGRs. I had ♠xx ♥xx ♦Kx ♣Qxxxxxx Partner opened a weak no trump, I bid 2♣, he bid 2♥, I bid 3♣ - a sign-off. He (who knew beyond any shadow of doubt that it was a sign-off) bid 3NT with ♠Jxxx ♥Qxxx ♦Ax ♣AKx and they led a diamond. Should we give them their money back?

On the contrary, Law 16A says that: *where "unexpected" is defined in a footnote as "unexpected in relation to the basis of his action". Curiously enough, the same wording and the same footnote appear in Law 73, but one of these days the Lawmakers will do one of the following: eliminate words that appear once in the Laws and once in what used to be the Proprieties; or create another section in which the words appear again, on what is known as the "Bellman Principle". Now, much debate has arisen since the publication of the 2007/8 Laws as to whether information from expected alerts is authorised. The prevailing view is that such information is authorised, because: the 1997 Laws contained no reference to alerts at all; so that when a reference to alerts was introduced in the 2007/8 Laws it used the word "unexpected" for a reason; and by the principle of "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis", it follows that information from expected alerts is authorised; quod erat demonstrandum. Of course, there are certain practical difficulties with this - for example, it will prove useful to employers of the Gerber convention in murky auctions. But what it means is what I have already said, which is this: you are entitled to assume that your partner knows what your bids mean, and you must proceed on the assumption that he knows what your bids mean and has (unbeknown to you) alerted them correctly and explained them correctly to the opponents, unless and until you have legally acquired evidence to the contrary. That is: you may not (without screens) "guess" successfully that partner has forgotten the system; if you make a call predicated on the assumption that he has, you must show your working. For the present, where you err is to say that "Law 16A is quite clear that the information of whether partner alerted or not is extraneous" - that is not so. The information of whether partner has unexpectedly alerted or not is extraneous, but if he behaves as you expect, you are presumed to have no information, extraneous or otherwise.

Why on earth should South pretend anything of the kind? It is what he might conclude with no UI to guide him that is relevant, not what he might conclude with different UI. It is not so, and the Law expressly says that it is not so: Of course, the information that partner has remembered the system is in some sense UI to you, but it is reasonable to suppose that the "information" that partner has remembered the system is not in fact information at all - he is supposed to do that, and you are obliged to proceed as if he has in fact done that until you have evidence from legal calls and plays that he has not.

Well, perhaps. But it is not completely clear to me that "the 3NT bid gives South authorized information that North forgot the system". Suppose, as South should pretend has happened, North alerted 2NT, explained it as "diamonds, may be very weak", and then bid 3NT over it. What would South conclude now? It is all very well for the original poster to say that "there are only two bids over 2NT in our system - 3♣ if we don't like diamonds and 3♦ if we do". Maybe the original poster would never bid 3NT over 2NT with such as ♠xxxx ♥Ax ♦Axxx ♣AQx but I am pretty sure that I would - after all, it would be nice to steal a game facing six diamonds to the king and nothing. And if we didn't make a game, maybe the opponents would have come to life and bid their own game (4♥) after our side had passed itself out in three diamonds. The important point, though, is this: it is almost never open to you to conclude from the auction alone that you have AI that partner has forgotten the system. You are expected to be completely oblivious to his alerts, non-alerts, responses to questions, and the like - you are expected to proceed as if he is bidding in accordance with your side's methods until the overwhelming preponderance of evidence from your own hand and the opponents' bidding tells you that he is not. On the actual hand, I'd pass 3NT like a rocket. Maybe he'll have three diamonds to the ace, and we'll make it on our combined 13 count. But that is not really the issue. South does not have AI that his partner has forgotten the system, and he cannot proceed as though he does.

Oh, sticking a number 17 onto a board originally numbered 8 because the vulnerability is the same but the dealer is not rates only about a 1.3 on the logarithmic scale of incompetence where the England football team scores 8.4 and the organisers of the Open at St Andrews 10. But in general, VPs should not be added to the economy just because people don't know what they're doing. It is unfair (potentially disastrously so) for one match to have 22 or more VPs at stake while all the other matches have 20.

This: there is nothing in the Laws to the effect that the result on a mis-marked board cannot stand. Indeed, the Laws expressly say that such a result shall stand, with the players using the (incorrect) markings on the actual board to determine the score rather than what the (correct) markings should have been. As to pran's waffling: as I have already remarked, it is entirely legal for a result obtained at one table to be "compared" with no result at all at the other table - that is what Law 86D is for. However, this Law is generally invoked only in cases of apparent skulduggery, to prevent players from nullifying a bad result by fouling the board and rendering it unplayable at the other table. Whether or not it should apply in the circumstances of the actual case is not clear; whether or not it can apply is also (at the moment) unclear to the WBF, from which it is possible to conclude that for the moment, a Director can apply it if he chooses. Awarding averge plus to both sides is, to my way of thinking, ridiculous - teams should not randomly have their scores enhanced with respect to the rest of the field just because the organisers are incompetent.

Both are permitted in UK competitive Scrabble, but only guesstimate in America, Canada, Israel and some others. It seems that guestimate is in the Collins English Dictionary. The OED gives "guesstimate" as the usual spelling, but "guestimate" as an alternative. It appends the notation "orig. US", which is lexicographese for "not really a word at all, but we'd better include it or they might nuke the Bodleian".

I imagine that: There were two actual boards, one played at bluejak's table and one at the other table. The North, East, South and West hands were identical at both tables. The markings on the board, though, were different at the two tables. We know that the dealer was different; we cannot tell whether the vulnerability was also different. From bluejak's account it is possible to conclude that North-South were not vulnerable, but impossible to deduce whether East-West were. None of this matters in the slightest.

I read the previous thread with considerable interest, wondering how it was that I missed it the first time around. I was probably asleep. I consider myself among the liberals when it comes to system regulation - at least to this extent: I believe that people who organize tournaments should have the absolute right to decide what methods should be played at those tournaments, while also believing that at any tournament calling itself a World Championship, the organizers should proscribe no methods whatsoever. I don't care how many boards per round there are - if you can't defend against strong passes and weak diamonds, and your inability to do this costs you the World Pairs Championship, then you didn't deserve the title of World Pairs Champion in the first place. But I also believe that your licence to play a particular method is wholly conditional upon your ability to disclose that method in accordance with the Laws - that is to say, fully and without ambiguity. If you keep forgetting what it is you play, then you haven't a hope of being able to fulfil your responsibilities under Law 40, and if you can't do that, you have no business playing the methods in the first place. All of which sounds very fine and noble (at least, I think it does - others may consider it absurdly Utopian or ridiculously Draconian, or if not inclined to sesquipedalianism, effing stupid). The question remains: what can be done to enforce it, even if it were felt desirable to do so? Well, one could take the view that in auctions deemed to have a sufficiently high probability of actually occurring, any statement to the effect that "by agreement, my partner is showing X" is deemed misinformation if the partner does not hold X, regardless of what it might say on page 137 of the system file or even on the convention card. One would need to provide for cases where a player has deliberately diverted from his side's methods, but I don't envisage any particular difficulty in doing this. Actual psyches are usually clear enough; what is not desirable is to have a player claiming that he psyched when the truth is that he forgot, and for the Laws in effect to afford the same protection to an amnesiac as they do to a trick cyclist. By the same token, in events where "anything goes" players should be assumed of sufficiently high standard to protect themselves against damage occurring from misinformation of this kind, and the onus on them to do so should in my view be significantly greater than it seems to be at present. In the actual case, then, if I ruled the world I would adjust the score when the OP found that his partner could not ruff the second round of hearts (unless, of course, declarer went three down anyway), but in less clear-cut positions I would not give redress for an analyzably stupid defence even if such a defence would not have been attempted had there been full disclosure.

Sure they didn't. But as far as I can tell, this does not mean that the Director should automatically strike out the results on the board. The Law says merely that the board is fouled - no question about that. Yet in cases where a board is more obviously fouled than this one, adjusted scores have been awarded. For example: a pair goes for 1400 on a part-score deal and when the board arrives at the other table, one of the hands is mysteriously found to contain several boxed cards, rendering normal play impossible at that table. The EBU's White Book says: The reference to 86.3 is to material supplied by Ton Kooijman, and reads: Now, in the actual case the board was not rendered unplayable at the other table - indeed, it was played at the other table. But to my way of thinking a Director might legitimately reason thus: the board was played in some form A at the table where North-South made four hearts; it was played in some form B at the table where East-West made three spades; no side at either table was responsible for the play of the board in different forms; so the North-South pair that made four hearts should keep 6 IMPs of the 12 they gained by so doing; but (as jdonn rightly indicates, although I do not agree with the details of his suggestion) the other side should not lose those IMPs, instead scoring the board as flat (because the board is, in effect, cancelled at that table). That is, a Director might so reason if he concluded that the North-South result of plus 620 was in no way due to the fact that North rather than West opened the bidding at that table. From bluejak's original account I conjecture that the Director could not reasonably have reached such a conclusion, in which case the board should simply be cancelled. The foregoing does not depend on whether the "correct" form of the board was played at bluejak's table or at the other table, since this does not matter: if a board has incorrect (per Law 2) markings as to dealer and vulnerability, it is nevertheless perfectly correct to play it according to the markings that it actually bears. Moreover, the indications are that the WBFLC doesn't actually know what it is doing, and while that remains the case Directors can pretty much do what they like. Of course they do this anyway, but this time they have an excuse.

Sorry for not knowing the law, but wouldn't it be most fair to give both teams Avg + (assuming neither is at fault) but if a team got a result that is better than that let them keep it? So in this case bluejak would win 12 on the board, his opponents would win 3 (that's avg + in a swiss right?) and they would both achieve seperate VP totals that may not add to 20, for example bluejak wins 20-0 and his opponents lose 18-2, or whatever. Well, Law 87 says But here is a match between two teams, one of whom played the board with North as dealer and one with West as dealer. With respect to that match, then, no division into groups will avail - the question is whether the Director may award an adjusted score on the board, or whether the board should simply be considered not to have been played in the match. If the Director considers it appropriate to award an adjusted score, he may then proceed in accordance with Law 86D: I know of no precedent that might guide the Director in the actual case. My own view is that almost no result should stand based upon play at two tables where the conditions were sufficiently different that at one table it was North's opening bid, while at the other table it was West's. If it transpired that West had an obvious pass as dealer, and that the information from West's pass could not have influenced the result at the table where West dealt, I might make an exception and allow the result at both tables to stand. Otherwise, I would not award any kind of adjusted score; I would simply rule that the board did not count towards the result of the match.

But the circumstances are not identical. Declarer can pull the jack out of his hand, spot that he needs to play the king, put the jack back and play the king. The point at which the jack is actually and irrevocably played is quite late in the process - much later in playing from hand than in calling for a card from dummy. Certainly he can, but there comes a point at which he has played the jack from his hand and he won't be allowed to change the play after that point. Identically, there comes a point at which he has played the jack from dummy and he won't be allowed to change the play after that point. Similarly, if declarer leads towards the ace-queen in the dummy and calls for the ace, but RHO plays the king because he thought declarer was about to call for the queen, the king becomes a played card if it is held so that it was possible for his partner so see its face. This is somewhere in "the process" between the time at which a card is played from dummy and the time at which a card is played by declarer - but what on Earth is the relevance of that? Once you've played a card, you've played it.

Put it this way: if declarer led towards his hand and played the jack before noticing that RHO had played the queen, he would not be allowed to change his play. Why should he be allowed to change a play from dummy in identical circumstances?

Funny you should say that. Excerpts from the OED that I did not quote earlier include: Now, the unique (as far as I know) feature of the OED is that in order to reinforce its notions of what words mean, it strives to record the earliest written instance in which a word was used, and on that occasion to note that the word meant x. It then records subsequent written instances of the word, perhaps used with meaning y instead (or at any rate with a meaning tending towards y as opposed to x). Only very occasionally do its editors make any definitive pronouncement at all as to what the word does, or "should", mean - they are recorders, not judges. For all that, in discussing how one might play (for example) xxxx AQ10xx for no loser, it seems to me easier to say "you should finesse the queen rather than the ten" than to say anything else.

If you run the queen from QJ facing Ax, you are also finessing the queen. As indeed you are if you run the queen from Qx facing Ax, and the question of why this should be referred to as a "Chinese finesse" is one that even the OED does not attempt to resolve.

Yes. That work gives: and defines "finesse" as: All of this suggests that the card you play (e.g. the queen from AQ) is the card that you finesse - it is the object of the (transitive) verb in the part of the definition following trans. above. The card (or cards) with which you hope that an opponent won't beat the card you finesse is the card (or cards) against which you finesse.

2♠. I expect to make it if I am allowed to play in it, but I will not make another bid in the auction. I would not have doubled one diamond, and am somewhat surprised to be asked.

I was hoping that some of the actual mathematicians would refer to the Parabolic Utility Function (oft quoted by Jeff Rubens, an actual mathematician, in the context of what to do in "sufficiently short" or "sufficiently long" matches). Maybe they did, and I am too stupid to know that they did. But I still wish I knew what it meant.

"You are old, Father David", the young man said, "And you don't even play the fit jump, But maybe the notion might enter your head Why we could not have reached six no trump?" "In my youth", said the old man, "I thought like a hero And would bid six no trump just the same, But the number of legs I could stand on was zero When the enemy played it in game."

No idea what the percentage action is. Would go with JL and bid 2♦, hoping for the best whilst fearing (as usual) for the worst. Good convention, Flannery. Wonder why no one plays it.

Always struck me as a bit illogical, that. After all, LHO might not have clubs, whereas RHO certainly has diamonds (indeed, playing the Walsh style that has become increasingly popular, the chances are that he has quite a lot of diamonds). Myself, I prefer to play that if an opponent bids a suit he might not have, then I have it when I bid it. If on the other hand an opponent bids a suit he certainly has, then I don't have it when I bid it.