dburn

Oh, if it transpired that there were twelve top tricks on any other of the boards passed to this table from the adjoining one, I might take a different view. What odds would you like? Having said that, I am not sure that I actually would take a different view. Despite jdonn's cogent arguments, I am not convinced that making two slam tries (one of them above game) on the East cards is as clear as all that. But I am sure that anyone hearing the phrase "twelve top tricks" from the next table would do so, just in case this happened to be the deal on which there actually were twelve top tricks. Weighted scores are fine and dandy, and - nay, because - they allow all manner of legal shortcomings to be fudged. But here is no case for a weighted score: if the Director had been called when he should have been, the board would never have been played and the result would have been average plus for both sides. That is what the Director should award on his eventual arrival.

I imagine he wanted to know because if 2NT showed the red suits, he would bid 3♥ to show spades; if 2NT showed diamonds and a major, he would need to find some other way to describe his hand - perhaps he could bid 3♦, or as a last resort be compelled to adopt a practice nowadays regarded as hopelessly uncool: bidding spades to show spades. But as I understand the case, he was told that 2NT showed diamonds and a major, yet he bid 3♥ anyway. If he did that, he must suffer the consequences, particularly since his pass to 4♥ does not seem to me entirely consistent with his own legal responsibilities. Had he discharged those satisfactorily, he might have been in 4♠ in any event. True, East was no doubt discombobulated by the turn of events (understandably to some extent, since North appeared to be operating under the impression that clubs are either a red suit or a major, or possibly both). Still, you cannot defend yourself against a charge of idiocy by claiming that you were not the only idiot present at the time.

Well, 6♣ is not a logical alternative since it is truly ridiculous. That removes it from consideration under Law 16 except in the ACBL, but if it happened to work then it could still be cancelled under Law 73. Double is also fairly ridiculous, but it is suggested over pass by North's shenanigans, so it could be cancelled under both Laws. North-South might argue that North's pass to 5♠ was forcing, but it is my experience that passes are forcing not as a function of system but as a function of tempo.

If East has heard from the adjoining table the phrase "twelve top tricks", then normal play of this board in the given circumstances has become impossible. However much East attempts to "act ethically", one cannot allow play to proceed with this amount of information available to a player, since it is bound to affect his judgement at least subconsciously. The Director should simply inform the table that had he been called when he should have been called, he would not have allowed play to continue beyond South's 3♣ overcall, and he should adjust the score to average plus for both sides. Law 12A3 is the only authority he needs for this purpose: there has been an "incorrect rectification of an irregularity" by the players at the table, who did not call the Director when they ought to have done. Of course, if a player has heard "twelve top tricks" from the next table, that will not render normal play of the board impossible in all circumstances; it may be that the East-West methods allow a completely automatic auction to a slam. But that is not the case here, and the result on the board cannot be allowed to stand. To give a weighted score here is absurd as well as being wholly unjustifiable from a legal point of view, although as in many cases where it is absurd to give a weighted score, no doubt the players would not mind all that much if it were done.

Oh, I do not suggest that one should not claim. What I do suggest is that the laws regarding claims should be so constructed that when a faulty claim occurs, it should be obvious what the ruling ought to be, and what the procedure that leads to the ruling ought to be. As this and many other cases have amply shown, this is not obvious in the least. In the original case, it is quite clear to me that under the laws as presently constituted declarer is (at least) one down. It is quite clear to other people, whose ability to construe complex English phraseology is (at least) equal to mine, that he isn't. Notions of "normality", "carelessness", "inferiority", "irrationality" and (ridiculously) "equity" are bandied about, and the only thing that is clear is that these mean completely different things to different people. Noch zu, these are different people who speak as their native tongue the language in which those words are written - God help those whose task it is to translate them into other languages, and to follow such translations. This is intolerable. The success or failure of any claim should not be a matter of whether jdonn or I arrive at the table to resolve the claim (whether the contract is 7NT or 2♥). It should be a matter of following, step by step, a well-formulated procedure that requires nothing whatsoever in the way of subjective judgement, and arriving at a conclusion that though it may seem unpalatable is at least objectively justifiable. Nigel's idea of emulating the online claiming procedure in face-to-face bridge is, though practicably completely hopeless, at least philosophically sound. The Laws of Duplicate Bridge are the former without the redeeming feature of being the latter.

South's duties are restricted to an explanation of the methods, which are stated to be non-existent; I would personally volunteer some explanation, but it would make no difference as 3S doubled is about as cold (but beautiful) as Iceland was when I visited it. This is not completely clear to me. I would like to know on what basis South decided to bid 3♣ with his actual hand; it seems an odd thing to do if you are sure that your partnership has no agreed defence to this kind of Multi. The director's ruling seems to me at least reasonable - either the table result stands or it does not. I would say, though, that one should not rule simply according to one's personal sympathies; either East-West were misinformed (in which case there may be damage to assess) or they were not. The committee's ruling seems to me to have no basis in law or in logic.

It may help to simplify the problem somewhat. [hv=d=w&v=b&w=saqhad65432c65432&e=s2h32dakqj10cakqj10]266|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] East, declarer in 7NT on a heart lead, claims saying "I have them all". Do you allow this claim: [a] if South has the guarded king of spades if North has the singleton king of spades [c] if South has the singleton king of spades [d] in no circumstances

Looks like hogwash to me. You hold: ♠32 ♥QJ10876 ♦32 ♣Q65 Partner opens 2♣, you bid 2♦ and partner bids 3♦. You bid 3♥, but this is a "second negative", so you go through life never being able to show the one redeeming feature of your hand. Nobody actually knows how to respond to 2♣, but if you want to use one of the bids that Kleinman prohibits you from making at all, you might consider playing one of them (say 2♠) as a hand with which you would (or might) have opened a weak two bid in some suit or other. Continuations left as an exercise for the reader.

This really is not a problem - it would be careless and inferior, hence "normal" by definition, to block the spades. Just because you or I would not do it, there is no reason to suppose that this particular East would not do it; from the evidence, he is a "fairly inexperienced player" who by the look of it was relieved to have twelve tricks and gave no thought at all to how he might make a thirteenth. But even if in practice he would never block the spades, that does not mean that it would be other than "careless or inferior" to block the spades. He claimed twelve tricks, and that is the number he scores.

Well, declarer confronted (as far as I can tell) this position: [hv=n=sk32&w=s&e=s&s=sq54]399|300|[/hv] Requiring two tricks, he or she - oh, let's just use D - led low to the king. East (a world champion) played low after some thought, whereupon D led low to the queen, losing to the doubleton ace. Now, when you lead low to the king you expect one of two things to happen in short order. Either the king will lose to the ace and you will later lose another trick in the suit, or it will not. If it does not, you will duck the next round and hope for the best. But when East plays slowly on the king, why might he be doing this? If you are a player above a certain level of competence, you will surmise that East is considering only with which card to signal; it will not occur to you that he might be considering ducking the ace, because no one (particularly a world champion) would do that. If on the other hand you are a player below a certain level of competence, there will in your mind be only one reason why a man (particularly a world champion) might give some thought when you play the king: he is wondering whether or not to play the ace. Therefore he has the ace, and therefore (when he does not play the ace) you can secure a second trick in the suit by leading to the queen. The point is this: declarer's "own misapprehension" occurred because of, and only because of, the hesitation. True, it ought not to have occurred in the mind of anyone above a certain (not very high) level of competence. But it is not open to officials to say that a player should have sufficient nous not to have been misled, only to say whether or not the player could in fact have been misled given the nous that the player possessed. Even if only an idiot could have been misled by what you did, this does not mean that the Laws allow you to go around misleading idiots with impunity. In passing, I should say that if a world champion (who presumably knew the position) did in fact give any thought at all to which card he should play under the king, and particularly if he did so against an opponent without much in the way of nous, I would... well, I would not be able to strip him of his titles, but if I had the power to order his summary execution, I would certainly do so.

Oh, one can plausibly argue that if three possibilities A, B and C exist, then: B is an alternative to A and so is C; A is an alternative to B and so is C; A is an alternative to C and so is B. Pedant though I am, I don't really mind the extension of the meaning of "alternative" to situations in which there exist more than two possibilities. What I do mind is the notion that if only one possibility exists, it can be described as an "alternative" to anything at all. It cannot, and so to describe it is an error. mjj29 appears to me to fall into this error when he says that it is OK to describe X as an alternative to "whatever other LAs there may _or may not_ be" [his emphasis]. If there are none, then X is not an alternative. If there are, then if X is suggested by UI it may not be selected, regardless of whether it is also suggested by AI. And if X is deemed an alternative merely by virtue of having been selected, then...

I wouldn't. If the opponents compete in clubs, maybe I can out-compete them in diamonds. If not, maybe partner will somehow scrape together eight tricks with diamonds as trump; it would be a shame if this wonderful effort were rewarded with a minus score instead of a plus. Still, even if no one in the world would actually pass 2♦ in an unpolluted auction, it will come as no particular surprise to learn that I strongly believe you should pass it in an auction polluted in this particular fashion. Raising to 3♦ may be OK under Law 16, but it is not OK at all under Law 73.

If 2♦ was a sign-off with four spades and longer diamonds, why did South raise it? Surely it could not be that South was taking a two-way action, designed to cater both for North having diamonds and North having a game force with spades?

My concern is not so much that the new regulation might change the meaning of the word "logical", but that it might change the meaning of the word "alternative". The thing about alternatives is that there cannot be only one of them. Strictly speaking, in any given situation there must be exactly two of them, each being the other's alternative. But in common parlance (especially bridge parlance) one often speaks of "three alternatives" when one should properly speak of "three possibilities", and this is not really an issue (not least because there is nothing the ACBL can do about it - the Laws use the word "alternative" and so must the regulation). Imagine that you have eight solid spades. You choose to open 1♠, the next hand bids 4♥ and your partner makes a slow double that you play as penalty (yes, I know that most of you don't play it as penalty, but bear with me for a moment). Now, the UI demonstrably suggests that you remove this - but so does your hand; one would say that you had "no [logical] alternative" to bidding 4♠. But if when you do bid 4♠ it becomes by regulation a "logical alternative", it must by definition become a logical alternative to something else - in the case of a slow penalty double, the usual candidate for "something else" is "pass". Since the UI demonstrably suggests that you do not pass, the new regulation will require you to pass even though to do so is not logical. At least, that is what I fear it will do. As I say, if what the ACBL wants to do is simply to prevent players from dodging Law 16 by taking illogical actions and hoping for the best, Law 73 already prevents them from doing that, and the ACBL need do nothing. But it may open up a can of worms if it says that an action is a "logical alternative" when there are no logical alternatives to it.

Previously, it has been held (at least in England) that if a player attempts to avoid his Law 16 responsibilities by taking an illogical action in the presence of UI, he would be in breach of his Law 73 responsibilities. I see no particular reason why the ACBL Laws Commission could not adopt the same approach, if its only concern was that players might act in this fashion and claim immunity from prosecution. Still, it is of course no business of mine to suggest to the ACBL Laws Commission what it should do, let alone to suggest that it should submit to phrenological scrutiny. My intention was merely to express the mild concern that unless the new regulation is very carefully considered, it may proscribe players from taking an action suggested by UI even when the AI they have available suggests the identical action. I have no doubt, however, that although the ACBL Laws Commission does not in fact contain Bertrand Russell, it nevertheless contains more than enough equally fine minds, whose possessors will easily avoid such potential paradoxes.

There is no explicit reference to the removal of a board at any time being illegal - it is an inference drawn from Law 8B (where 8 is the integer one greater than 7 and B is the first letter of the word Bravo):

That is going to slow down the play in ACBL tournaments even more than the players manage to slow it down at the moment. For if, when a player takes any action in the presence of unauthorized information, it becomes ipso facto a logical alternative that Law 16 therefore means he may not take, he will sit there for quite some time wondering what to do. Is Bertrand Russell a member of the ACBL Laws Commission, by any chance?

I do not claim that thinking, or hesitation, or other transmission of unauthorized information is illegal - it is not; for although Law 73A2 says that: "Calls and plays should be made without undue emphasis, mannerism or inflection, and without undue hesitation or haste." it remains the case that a player with something to think about makes his call or play with "due" hesitation. But Law 73A1 says: "Communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of calls and plays." which means that if unauthorized information has been transmitted, it must not be acted upon. That is, my reading of L73C claims only that it is stronger than L16B, not that it renders thinking illegal. So Jeff Rubens used to argue in the Bridge World, but what he ignored (and what his co-editor Edgar Kaplan insisted upon) is that the question is chiefly of perspective. Imagine if you will the following: A stranger in a pub buys me a drink. It happens to be absinthe, and I hate absinthe, so I have no intention of drinking it. Another stranger grabs me by the arm. "Don't drink that!" she cries. "It's poisoned - that fellow who bought it for you is a serial killer." Now, how will this be reported in tomorrow's newspapers? "Man Saves Own Life By Hating Absinthe"? Or "Woman Saves Man's Life By Identifying The Absinthe Poisoner"? The first is true, the second is not - but which would the public prefer to believe? Suppose in the next morning's papers, the headline was "Base Ingrate Refuses To Thank Woman Who Saved His Life - Says He Took No Advantage Of Her Information". Would I not be correctly vilified and driven to emigrate to, say, Tristan da Cunha or Wolverhampton? Although I know in my heart that I did not take any advantage of the information received, no one else will believe it. The Laws of bridge are so structured that an umpire does not say (or need to say) "you did what you did because you acted on unauthorized information, so we will rule against you". Instead, he says "you did what someone acting on unauthorized information would have done, so although I am quite prepared to take your word for it that you hate absinthe, nevertheless I will rule against you as if you had acted on unauthorized information". Campboy comes close to the right perspective when he says: The real difficulty is that just because a player correctly believes that he would always have bid 3NT (so that it is in fact true), that does not make it legal.

This regulation is beyond all reason - for example, if your partnership agreed not to open any balanced hand below a 13-count, you would in the real world be exercising your judgement, but in the WBF world be playing a HUM by point [1] of the regulation. That point is self-contradictory in any event: if an opening pass may be "any 0-3 or any 13+", then it does not show at least the values for an opening one-bid, so would not be a HUM under the very regulation that tries to classify it as one. Moreover, an opening bid of 1♣ that shows 2+ clubs most certainly is a "4 HUM", since it shows either long clubs (which the WBF defines as 3+ clubs) or short clubs (which the WBF defines as 2- clubs). Max Bavin once explained to me why the regulation does not actually mean this; I have forgotten what he said, but perhaps it made sense at the time (or perhaps there is some WBFLC minute to the effect that the Committee did not intend what the Committee had actually written). The trouble is, of course, that it is very difficult to put into words what is actually intended without creating some obvious absurdities. You could probably deal with point [1] by saying that "your system is a HUM if your partnership agrees that a pass can be based on the intention to initiate a constructive auction, even if the pass can also be based on weaker hands". Point [2] is probably all right as it stands (at least, in its intent), and so is point [3]. Point [4] could perhaps be addressed thus: "any opening bid at the one level that can be based either on a balanced hand or on 4+ cards in the suit bid is not considered part of a HUM; otherwise your system is a HUM if your partnership agrees that an opening bid of one of a suit leaves doubt as to whether you wish to suggest that the suit be trump or whether you wish to suggest that the suit not be trump". That would at any rate handle Suspensor, and it would probably allow people still to play canapé. Point [5] could perhaps be similarly addressed: subject to the preamble to point [4], "your system is a HUM if your partnership agrees that an opening bid of one of a suit leaves doubt as to whether you wish to suggest that the suit be trump, or whether you wish to suggest that some other specified suit be trump". That is the best I can do after thinking about this for an hour. I do not propose to think about it any longer, but probably there are still vast gaps in what I have suggested. I confess that my heart isn't really in it - I think that people should be allowed to bid what they like, and if other people moan about how hard it is to defend against people bidding what they like, they should take up chess. But if there's one thing I really hate, it's rules that don't mean what they say.

There are indeed, but "what partner was thinking about" may be "fairly certain" to the man across the table, but not certain at all on purely analytical grounds. As Jan Martel rightly remarks, clues from body language (or table presence, or previous partnership experience) will often render the nature of a player's problem completely obvious to his partner, although the position may be such that nothing could be inferred by a director or an appeals committee told only that there was a "break in tempo". That is why I tend to put my faith in the principle I have stated earlier: that the slower an action, the more relieved the actor would be if the action were not followed by three passes. Otherwise, in order to ascertain whether any Law has actually been broken in cases such as 1NT- slow (natural) 2NT, directors and appeals committees would need to ask players questions such as "does your partner overbid more often than he underbids, or vice versa?" which would be [a] unnecessarily accusatory and vaguely farcical, since it would be close to impossible to verify the answers. This seems to me seriously wrong: if all possibilities suggest that taking action A would be advantageous, Law 73 expressly forbids the taking of action A unless all actions not-A would be ridiculous. In this case it is not clear what action has an increased expected matchpoint score anyway; some pretty good players here have said that pass is "reasonable" or "could well be right" (but that they themselves would bid). I contend that opposite the overwhelming majority of hands on which a representative sample of the bridge-playing population would double very (very) slowly, one will increase one's actual matchpoint score by bidding rather than passing. If you believe otherwise, that is a question of judgement and not a question of principle; but the principle in question remains whether even if "no one" would actually pass (so that bidding is legal per Law 16), passing is nevertheless mandated by Law 73. I have tried to express this as clearly as I can in an earlier post: if partner's double were accompanied explicitly by "but please don't pass", I think that Law 16 allows me to bid but Law 73 does not. It is not clear to me that you have actually addressed this question, which seems to me to be the chief cause of difficulty. Actually, I won't feel awkward at all. If I passed this hand because (and only because) I felt constrained to do so by Law 73, and if pass turned out to be the winning action, and if a director or a committee ruled that pass was a logical alternative demonstrably suggested by the break in tempo, or that by passing I had failed in my duty to be careful not to take advantage of unauthorized information, then I would feel as a batsman does who is given out caught when he knows that he did not hit the ball. Considering what one's legal responsibilities may be, and then acting upon them, is not what I mean by "cleverness" in the face of unauthorized information. Besides, none of the partners with whom I play are "clever" enough to suggest reverse hesitations as a method - and if they did, I would probably forget it anyway. Put simply: there are many occasions on which I have been given a problem and asked "what would you do?" When I have replied "I would do X", I have been asked the supplementary question "what would you do if partner's previous call had been slow?" More often than not I have said "then of course I would not do X", without going into very much detailed consideration at all of whether there are actually logical alternatives to X (there almost always are, or the problem would not have been posed in the first place). The new Law 16 no longer compels me to act at the table in that manner. The old Law 73 still does, and so I will continue to do.

Are you sure you are looking at the current screen? The reference was to Law 8B, not Law 88.

The difficulty I have with this kind of reasoning is that no break in tempo (or other way of conveying unauthorized information) ever seems to suggest anything to you. Since there are almost always (at least) two conflicting reasons why someone might do something slowly, his partner can always argue "well, it might have been this, or it might have been that, or it might have been..." and (as far as I understand your argument) do whatever he likes without fear of breaking Law 73C. This in effect renders Law 73C inoperative. Not that I would have any objection to rendering it completely inoperative by removing it from the Laws altogether, since I consider that its existence renders Law 16B1 inoperative - but your argument appears to me also to do that. I have sympathy with the notion that all questions of whether unauthorized information has been used should be resolved by considering what the peer group of the player concerned would do in the absence of such information, and that is the way in which Law 16B1 is currently implemented. Thus I would prefer to retain Law 16B1 and to remove Law 73C, but I understand the opposite view. What I would prefer does not matter, of course. Since both Laws currently exist, cases must currently be judged under both Laws. Experience suggests - nay, demonstrably suggests - that the slower a player's action, the less happy that player is at the thought that it will conclude the auction, and in general rulings under L73C are given on that basis. I observe in passing that in your cases , [c] and [d], the suggestion from the break in tempo is still to bid, just as it is in case [a]; if partner's holding in, say, hearts or clubs is "significantly worse than I would normally expect", the opponents will be able to add several tricks in that suit to the several tricks they have in spades, and 3♠ doubled will easily make. Only if I knew that case [e] obtained - partner only doubles very, very slowly when he has shape-suitable rubbish opposite which I will not make 3NT with this hand - would the suggestion be to pass (and then I would bid, because that is what L73C says I must do).

Suppose that instead of merely saying "double", partner says "double, but please don't leave this one in". Now, L16 says that (in effect) you may bid if among players of your class using the methods of your partnership: [a] only an insignificant number would consider passing, or although a significant number would consider passing, fewer than "some" would actually pass. Exactly what constitutes "a significant number", and "fewer than some", is left as an exercise for the reader (or for the Regulating Authority). However, if either of the conditions [a] and above is met, then passing is not considered a logical alternative to bidding, and you are not obliged to pass. L73 on the other hand says that (in effect) you should pass if bidding could be construed as taking "any advantage" of the unauthorized information from your partner's extraneous remark. This to me implies that unless it is completely obvious from your hand that to pass would be ridiculous, you are obliged to pass. The question is, then, to what extent a very slow double in fact carries the unspoken message "but please don't leave this one in". It is my belief that this is the overwhelmingly likely meaning of a very slow double (as opposed to merely a slow double, which may simply convey the unspoken message "I don't have a hand that would double in tempo", and says nothing about whether the hand is more or less suitable for having partner leave the double in). That is: since I and others have described pass as "reasonable" rather than "ridiculous", I believe that although L16 says I may bid, L73 says I must pass. Of course I need not jump to seven of my shortest suit - that is not the issue. But if I did jump to 7♥ and it made, I believe that the score should still be adjusted not under L16 (7♥ is certainly not a logical alternative suggested over anything by the unauthorized information) but under L73 (which compels me to pass).

I am not sure you have understood anything I have said, and I do not particularly blame you for that - these are deep waters. What I say, to clarify, is that in the context of Law 16 you and jdonn are both right when you say in effect (as you both did say) that "if no one would pass [an in-tempo double] then we shouldn't make anyone pass". But in the context of Law 73, then if I and jdonn say in effect (as we both did say) that "I think pass is very reasonable. Why should we have 9 fast tricks, one spade stopper is very scary?" then although neither of us would pass an in-tempo double, both of us should pass a very slow double if we are convinced that a very slow double can only be based on a hand that really does not want us to pass it. Of course, we (by which I mean I - jdonn never errs) may be wrong - I in particular live in the constant dread that the Original Poster will tell us that partner actually had a weak no trump, and that my hand passed his very slow double, and the score wasn't adjusted to 3NT down two as it should have been... but to return to the main stream of this evening's symposium: Now, I don't care whether they rewrite L16 or L73. I think that your (aquahombre's) point of view (bid 3NT) is entirely reasonable, and that it is entirely ridiculous that the present L16 and the present L73 should co-exist. I also think (how could I think otherwise?) that my point of view (pass) is entirely reasonable, and that it is entirely ridiculous that the present L16 and the present L73 should co-exist. And furthermore, I think that Carthage ought to be destroyed...

Oh, no one is suggesting that you should bid 3NT slowly. The point is that you should choose pass instead of 3NT, perhaps because the UI from partner's very slow double demonstrably suggests that you should not choose pass. The further point is that even if no one would actually pass with your hand over an in-tempo double, L16 then says that it is OK for you to bid, but L73 says (or perhaps says) that it is still mandatory for you to pass over a very slow double.