dan_ehh

Thank you all for the fast responses. I agree that 4NT should probably be quantitative, however this was not the case. Both players agreed that it is RKCB, they just hadn't discussed whether they play 0314 or 1430, so the 5♣ bidder assumed they play the "more standard" responses. Does that change anything?

[hv=d=p&v=b&s=sqhqj75432dk6ckj5]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Only we are bidding: 1♣-1♥-1♠-3♥*-4NT-5♣**-5NT * 3♥ is forcing to game. ** 5♣ is undiscussed. Assumed 03-14. What is your next bid?

If the correct agreement is that 2♣ is majors and south misbid then there should not be any rectification. However, if "natural" is the correct agreement then declarer is required to announce this before the opening lead. I will cancel the double because west surely doubled based upon the trump trick and strong heart holding. However I do believe that there was a "failure to play bridge" on defense here, because with a void in dummy, a singleton in hand, and south with 2 (or maybe 3 at the most if the michaels bid was made with 5-4), east must have at least 9 clubs, and quite possibly 10. This is impossible according to the auction so west should have woken up and asked what's up with the 2♣ bid.

I am afraid that I do not understand what you mean. Could you provide an example to illustrate your point? If I fail to alert a call for which an alert is required I have given MI to opponents (who according to our Norwegian regulations are then entitled to assume that the call was "natural") Whenever I alert a call in Norway I essentially "alert" opponents that it may be in their interest to ask about that call. If it then turns out that the call is not alertable all the "sanction" I get is the warning that the call does not need to be alerted. I am not comfortable with a situation where I could be sanctioned against in any way for alerting a call that does not need an alert, and I shall not automatically as director accept that opponents have been misinformed from an unneccessary alert. There might be so many different reasons why an alert is required that they cannot safely assume they know why a call was alerted without consulting the system card and/or asking. When they then have the correct information there is no longer any MI from the unneccessary alert and no reason for any sanction. So with every possible call available in an auction there are IMHO good reasons for having a rule that an alert (depending on the interpretation of that call) is required or that an alert is not required, but never that an alert is forbidden. regards Sven The reasoning behind the decision to disallow alerts in some cases is, at least in some of these cases, to prevent UI, not MI. Specifically in Israel, where doubles are not alertable, the chief TD has informed me that their decision was made because there are so many different types of doubles that they are afraid that an alert to some but not to others will be too strong a wakeup call for partner that the double has been misinterpreted.

Is getting lost on the way to the venue and missing the first session "part of the game"? It is certainly an error. But bridge is not a test of navigation, any more than it is a test of being able to hold your cards without dropping them. "The game" is about making calls and plays. Errors in making calls and plays, whether they are infractions of law or just poor bridge, are part of the game. The discussed issue is whether people are contemptible for trying to profit from an error made by the opponents. No one profits from you being late for the game, the only effect it has on the score is that you get penalized. I don't have any problem with an outsider assisting a disabled person to hold the cards, but what if the person assisting drops the cards? The point is that mechanical errors will always occur, and trying to artificially separate them from the game using "ethics" is wrong. I have just remembered an unfortunate example from my own past: I was declaring a contract and after cashing my top tricks, I was in the middle of a cross ruff. I was young(er) and foolish(er) (is that a word?) and so I was playing very fast, and accidentally pulled the wrong card from my hand, intending to ruff it in dummy. A moment later I realized this was actually a trump so it could not be ruffed in dummy. I asked the opponents if I could take it back and they said no. I called the director, and showed him my hand, making it very clear that this was a mechanical error and that I was in the middle of a cross ruff, but he still didn't let me take it back, because the rules say the card is played. Unlucky, but that is the game. Should my opponents be ashamed of themselves? I don't think so.

My feeling is that there are some errors that are considered "part of the game". Why are errors of one kind considered "part of the game" while errors of another kind are not? And more importantly - who gets to decide which error belongs to which kind? Why aren't all errors "part of the game"? Sorry, but this is a very bad analogy. The manner in which a player speaks to another player/the umpire/the director is not part of the game, it is just part of regular human interaction. And yes, I am aware of the part in the Bridge Laws referring to conduct and etiquette, and while I don't mind it, I find it unnecessary. I do agree that morals still apply while playing the game, but when you are playing a game, the moral you should be following is "I have agreed/promised/contracted to play by the rules of this game and so I should do that". I strongly disagree. If the rules are silent it means you don't have to do it. If they are ambiguous, well, that's a problem in them, but I still don't think morality should come into the picture, seeing as the concept of morality is a very fluid one. Lastly, I will mention L72A which specifically addresses "lawful procedures and ethical standards set out in these laws" (emphasis added). I don't know what exactly was meant by the author(s) of this specific article, but it sounds to me as though they meant to emphasize the fact that these are the complete laws and nothing outside is required.

I don't think this was the original topic of the thread, but since so much has been said already, I would like to add my two cents: I personally avert my eyes when someone shows me their cards, and also tell them to "hold their cards back", and I would never try to look at a dropped card. However, I act like this because of my personal desire not to win this way, and not because I think it is, or should be, a universally accepted moral. Trinidad wrote: It is my belief that Ethics and Bridge are two terms completely unrelated to each other. Ethics apply in real life, and Bridge is a game. Human beings require a set of moral rules to live by, because no one has a rule book for life (the penal code is a beginning but is insufficient). In a game, however, we have a set of clear rules which constitute the game, and as long as we are acting within the boundaries of these rules, we are not doing anything wrong. gnasher wrote: This is true, but I do not think it has any bearing on our game. I will even give you an example. As an online TD, I often encounter this claim: "1♥ was a misclick? Then he should have informed us about it", to which I reply that there is no lawful obligation to do so. Often another message arrives, saying "perhaps not, but I would have, because that is the ethical thing to do". Different people have different opinions as to how the game SHOULD be played. I don't think exploiting your opponents' mistake (mechanical or not) is anything to be frowned upon. What do you think about the rare case when you get to make a grand slam missing the trump ace because someone revokes? Revoking is often a mechanical error in the sense that the revoker does not realize he did not follow suit until it is too late.

I would appreciate it if someone addressed McBruce's and my own suggestions that this is a case for L23.

This may be a long shot, but: L73A2 says calls should be made without undue hesitation. The hesitation here was definitely undue - the only reason for it was that south knew north did not intend to make this call. L72B1 says what south did is not allowed even if he is willing to suffer the penalty. Combined with L23, I think the change of the call should NOT be allowed, AND perhaps south deserves a DP seeing as this was not a hesitation with a "bridge reason". (Although maybe skip the DP since he is probably headed for a bad result anyway) P.S. I would even say this is a breach of L73B1. The fact that south did not actually say "Partner, is that the call you intended?" does not mean info was not passed by the hesitation. When I call your cell and you don't pick up, you still get the info that "I was looking for you".

cherdanno wrote: You'd be surprised how many players play this as 15-17.

From the ACBL website, http://www.acbl.org/play/alertProcedures.html It is true that the 1NT bidder does not fit the common "passed hand" definition. I think this is not a perfect alert regulation seeing as it does not address this specific issue. However, I also think that the 1NT bidder cannot have a 15-17 (or similar) range because then he most probably would have overcalled 1NT at his first turn or made some other noise. I believe the "no alert for passed hand unusual NT" rule was designed because passed hands do not usually bid NT to play, therefore it is "normal" to expect they are "unusual" (sounds a bit like an oxymoron, doesn't it?). B) So as I understand it, the spirit of this regulation is that the opponents are supposed to ask what sort of NT bid this is, when it is made in a situation where it is pretty obvious that it is not a "regular" NT overcall. I agree this is murky and in my partnership the 1NT bid would indeed be a balancing (11-14ish) one.

bluejak wrote: Perhaps I misunderstood the OP, but from what I gathered, the NS pair HAD no agreement and they just ASSUMED differently. If there was a clear agreement then we must know what it is, and then perhaps the ruling changes completely, but from this wording: it looks very much like the correct explanation of 3♣ is "no agreement", and that the given explanation was the source of all the trouble. Regarding the weighted result, sorry, but what I meant is that I have not given enough time to consider which result(s) are likely for the board other than the fact that I am 99% sure 4♠ is down at least one trick. I am not used to weighted results and so I did not consider this. Apologies for that.

I think both calls were affected by the UI: 1. Let's assume north doesn't hear south's explanation, and has to make a decision whether to bid over 4S. Since they don't have agreements, north has no idea what the 4S bid means. It can be strong and slammish (personally I think this is unlikely), or it can be weak with long spades ("fast arrival"-ish). North must consider both of these, therefore I believe passing 4S because it *could* be weak must be a logical alternative. 2. South's pass of 5C is, in my opinion, very blatantly affected by the hesitation. Assuming her initial explanation of 3C is correct, 5C can only be a cuebid on the way to slam. Why would her partner choose to play 5C when they have an established 9+ fit in spades? The only reason to pass 5C is to think the initial understanding of the bid was wrong, and the only way this could happen is if something in her partner's behavior (the hesitation in this case), made her "wake up". I would like to add that I do believe there was a hesitation - probably because North was considering whether to pass 4S and risk going down, or bid 5C and risk not being able to keep that score. I would change the result to 5S-2, maybe -3 because I haven't looked closely enough as to whether the defense gets 4 or 5 tricks, and add a procedural penalty for the NS pair, for misinformation. In such an event, the players are expected to know the correct answer to the question asked is "no agreement".

Thanks to everyone for answering. To iviehoff, in the unlikely event that this actually happens, I will begin with the "if 3C is majors" explanation. :lol:

Hi everyone, Following Elianna's link to this thread: http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=23651, I realized this is a very interesting theoretical discussion. The problem illustrated in as follows - 1D-(3C)*-X The partner of the 3C bidder said he forgot their agreement, and was then sent away from the table while the 3C bidder informed the opponents as to their agreement. 3C was a natural preemptive bid, but the forgetful player thought it showed the majors (but admittedly he wasn't sure). Upon returning, he inquired about the meaning of the X, and the question was whether his opponents are allowed to respond with "if 3C is natural X is takeout, but if 3C shows the majors X shows a club suit", or in other words, whether the forgetful player was allowed to use his opponents' disclosure of their own agreements to solve his memory problem. In the original thread, there was some emphasis about the fact that a director was not present, and the forgetful player was sent away by the other players. But since this is something that directors do as well, I am curious as to which of the solutions would be best. Personally I think the "if 3C is A then X is B, if 3C is C then X is D" solution works nicely and in accordance with the rules, but credentialed responses would be nice.

From the info you provided, 16 tables made at least 10 tricks in a ♥ contract. That's almost half of the field. As to your question whether the director must assume that "your" declarer is part of the "good" guys, the answer is yes, because it is your bad information that robbed him of the chance to prove himself. Note that I am not suggesting in any way that you or your partner had any malicious intent of deceiving the opponents - in fact I am convinced that there was no such intent. A common problem is that players don't know the correct answer to the opponents' question, and this causes misinformation. The score adjustment is not a penalty in the sense that it is not meant to discipline you, it is just an attempt to "make things right" - to change the score to what it would have been if a proper explanation had been given. Of course an artificial score of 50% of this and 20% of that, etc., is not a real score, but it is considered the most accurate solution. Regarding the appeals' committee, my guess is that he knew you weren't a contender and thought you wouldn't care enough (for the committee to look at the case, you must deposit a sum of money, and this money is not given back if the committee finds the appeal to be unjustified).

I must say that this looks like a very easy case to me. The first step is to establish whether or not there's been misinformation. According to the information given by the poster, NS have no special agreement over a Polish 1♣ opener, therefore the correct answer to the opponents' question is "natural" or maybe "no agreement", but certainly not "Michael's", and hence wrong information has been given. Moreover, I will add that without proof (on the CC), the director should assume that the bidder knew what he was bidding while his partner was mistaken, and not vice versa. The second step is to establish damage. This looks very clear to me - if a proper explanation had been given, it is very likely that EW would have reached the good 4♥ contract, and made it, possibly even with an overtrick (need a ♦ lead and continuation to hold the contract to 10 tricks. A ♦ can be discarded on the 4th ♠ if there is tempo, and after the natural 2♣ bid a ♣ bid is more than likely. Of course declarer must play ♠s before ♦s but regardless of that, 10 tricks seem very likely. It is true that East decided not to change his bid after the "corrected" explanation, but we have no idea what west understood from the "new" 2♥ bid. Maybe their agreement is that cuebidding now shows a stopper in this suit? Maybe East has QTxxx in ♥? Does the 3NT bid imply a balanced hand according to the Polish ♣ system? The fact that there is "authorised" information that east wanted to make a nonforcing 2♥ bid does not seem very relevant to me, since West's 3NT bid is normal regardless of the information given, and it is East's decision that is affected by the misinformation. East is a passed hand so even if 2♥ showed a maximum hand with a ♥ stopper west's practical bid is 3NT (especially considering Matchpoints scoring). Another irrelevant fact is that 3NT can make on good play - it is true, but in MP scoring, 9 tricks in 3NT are still inferior to 10 or 11 in 4♥. I do not think East can correct 3NT to 4♥ after a Michael's bid, because I am pretty sure the West hand can be almost anything - from a balanced 19 count to a 4126 strong hand (and if I am wrong here, please correct me). It is very clear that East can never bid 4♥ under these circumstances while there is a fair chance that EW can try some constructive bidding and reach 4♥ if given the proper explanation (West might bid 3♣ as an artificial bid asking for more info?). A good rule is that when in doubt, the director should rule in favour of the innocent side and send the guilty side to the committee. Therefore as a director onsite I would surely rule that the score be changed to 4♥ (not sure how many tricks but that doesn't seem very important at the moment), and send NS to the appeals committee. Now, as the AC, I might change this decision, but not completely. A just result, in my opinion, would be some number of %% of a making 4♥ contract (about 55% I would say), another %% of 11 tricks in 4♥ (probably around 15%), and the remaining 30% will be from the actual 3NT-1 result. The important point that needs to be stressed is that damage begins where the misinformation altered events. We need to answer this question: "What would have happened had EW been given the proper explanation?", and the answer to this question is the correct ruling. I strongly disagree with both of these being serious errors. The argument about "not knowing their methods over Michael's" is irrelevant, as there was no Michael's bid in this board, and even if you are right, it is very unfair to expect a pair to be able to reach 4 of a major after their opponent showed 4 (usually 5) cards in that suit. This depends of course on the level of this pair, but I am assuming this is not the Bermuda Bowl. The argument about a "stupid 3NT bid" may have *some* merit, but it is still my opinion that 3NT is a rather normal bid, considering the scoring method and the fact that East had already passed initially. Please note that the 30% I gave as a committee to 3NT-1 is due to my assumption that there is a certain chance that EW would not have reached the good 4♥ contract even if given proper information, and there is no relation to the supposedly self-inflicted damage. Perhaps I was too harsh with them as the poster notes that only 4 out of 34 tables played in NT (only slightly more than 10%).

Here is my proposition for an addendum to the COC: "A team which will not show up for a match will receive the score of 0 Victory points for that match. The opposing team which did show up will receive the highest between their average of VPs + 1 and the average VPs which had been scored against the team which has not showed up by all other teams. These averages will be calculated after all matches have been finished." If you define it in the COC I feel fine about it. 18:12 is just as much an arbitrary decision as the formula I have just suggested, its only advantage is that it is simpler and its disadvantages have already been discussed. Regarding the link you gave, it looks very interesting in theory. My problem with it is that Bridge is not an exact science and it is quite possible that with very few matches, a "bad day" or "bad match" will have too big an effect. Predicting results is always a problem but I think that in long RRs such as those in the recent EC, using the averages is a better method. In my opinion it also conforms to the Laws of Bridge. But I am not a mathmatician and it is entirely possible that your idea is brilliant. Perhaps you should suggest it to the WBF and EBL :) Last but not least - I made this suggestion because I would rather have the Lebanese team participate in the tournament than disqualify them.

I do not believe disqualification is the proper way to address this issue. After all, it is not the Lebanese team's fault that their government forbids them to play. But I do agree that granting 12 VPs to a team which did not show up is wrong. 0 sounds about right. Regarding the team which did show up, I do not think awarding 18 VPs is a fair treatment either. In modern bridge, whenever a board is skipped and one side is not at fault, the innocent side's result for this board is set to A+, which means 3 IMPs or 60%. But if the pair's average for the session is greater than the granted 60%, the law allows the director to assign them their average for the session so that the skipped board will have virtually no effect - even if their average for the session is 80%. A good treatment, in my opinion of course, would be to wait until the tournament is over and then assign this team their average of VPs, perhaps even with a bonus if the other team is ranked very low.

Hello, I have tried sending a message to one of my friends the exact instant he was disconnected. The nickname displayed has changed to "~850~002" and the message appears to have been delivered to this nickname. I don't think this user is actually real - it said the user is kibitzing in some team match, I followed it and there was no one kibitzing but me. Anyway, this is probably a very minor bug, just thought you'd like to know anyway.