McBruce

A very similar incident happened in Vancouver, at a 0-300 tournament, with a player holding a 12-count with KQTxxxx of spades, hearing 1S on her left, 2C from partner and 3S on her right! She doubled, somehow this was passed out, and when she contributed the KH to the first trick, declarer wondered whether her own king of hearts would prevail. It seemed to us that with the actual cards she would not have doubled and the auction would end, so we let them play 3S undoubled with the correct cards, which made for 140. On the following hand, does Law 24B apply to the exposed king of hearts? It says "during THE auction period," which surely means the auction period for that hand and not the following one...

I have heard other ACBL TDs say that there is a key difference between a poorly-thought-out claim statement and a poorly-worded claim statement. I think the idea is that "adjudicating as equitably as possible to both sides" means that we don't adopt a "gotcha" attitude, and when it is apparent that the claimer has simply misspoken and actually meant something different from what was literally said, we go with what was meant. Here, it is pretty clear to me that declarer inadvertently substituted "club finesse" for "spade finesse." It might rise to the level of "doubtful point" if declarer had three small clubs opposite AKQT. Note that 70D1 and 70E1 says "the Director shall not accept from claimer..." The last two words do not preclude the Director from accepting a line of play that he thinks is what the claimer intended to say, even if what actually came out is different.

Doesn't 25B1 give the player the option of substituting a different call that LHO has the option to accept? This didn't happen; what happened was that when I said that the action of placing the bid-box card on the table constituted a bid and determined that it was intended when he pulled it from the box, the player simply put the 2NT card back on the table. But had he chosen at this point to replace it with a pass card, or 3NT, or 6NT, 25B1 seems to at least give LHO the option of accepting the substitution. I suppose one could argue it equally likely that responding 2NT and then retracting the bid without offering a replacement might mean that the player is thinking of bidding 3NT or thinking of passing 1NT. If so, opener has no UI that gives him an edge.

ACBL Club Swiss Teams. Auction has gone 1NT - Pass. As TD you are told that the partner of the 15-17 1NT bidder pulled out the 2NT card and placed it on the table, then removed it before the next player made a call but did nothing further. It is quickly established that the player meant to pull 2NT from the box: the 2NT call was not unintended at the time it was made. The player decides to stick with the natural, invitational 2NT. Next player passes. The 1NT opener has a 4-3-3-3 16 count, honors in each suit. He chooses to bid 3NT, having been warned not to take advantage of the UI. If it makes are you adjusting?

If a club's policy is illegal, complain to the ACBL. Let me give you one example of this actually working: Our local club had a frequent TD caller. We're talking 5-8 calls per session, usually over hesitations that nobody else saw. Eventually a director hit upon the following solution, after three separate calls during the same auction. He told the frequent caller to, whenever he felt the TD should be called, ask his partner to call if he agreed, "because if I hear your voice again, I'm not coming." Popular, effective, but illegal. The player at first tried grumbling to anyone he could find to listen, without much success (since most simply wanted him to stop calling when somebody took 0.3 exta seconds for a call), then told everyone he had quit playing at the club (nobody much cared), and finally complained in writing to the ACBL. The complaint got bounced around for several months, but eventually the club received a letter from the District Recorder, explaining why this policy was illegal and suggesting alternate solutions. The player was contacted and told that the policy was canceled, but that DPs would be swift and escalating should his behavior continue as before. It did not.

Law 25A applies if a call is changed, or if there is an attempt to change, without pause for thought. If he makes the call, you get called to the table and take him away, then find out whether it was unintended, how on earth can Law 25A be in time to offer to him? I stand corrected (except that I am currently seated). ;)

"at this point my partner doesn't want to continue until that hand has been cleared up" When I ran tournaments on BBO I did not expel people for psyching, but I did expel them for refusing to play while they argued a ruling. If you are trying to convince a TD that a ruling is wrong, you have a much better chance if you don't make life miserable for the rest of the room by holding up proceedings. You have no chance of having the ruling changed if you inconvenience other players with a refusal to continue. Any reasonable TD will happily discuss it later.

I think the cat was let out of the bag when declarer said "I felt that I pulled the wrong card due to mechanical error." The handy "mechanical error" excuse is overused as it is -- we cannot extend it so much that it becomes a matter of opinion or self-judgment!

I don't; at least, not at the table. I tell East to put his cards face down on the table and come away from the table with me. I ask the other players not to talk about the situation while we are gone. Away from the table I ask whether the call was the one he intended when he reached for the bid-box. If not, we go back and apply 25A, where LHO does not have the option to accept the first call. If so, I ask how it came to be that he intended to make an insufficient bid. Depending on the answer, I discuss what sort of hand he was trying to describe by the insufficient bid and then I ask if there is another call that means almost the same thing. If that call is fully contained within the range of meanings of his intended (although insufficient) bid, I consider 27B1b; otherwise, I use the rest of 27B. (If it is a good day, I will be on the ball enough to realize that he will suggest 2♥ as a replacement call, which doesn't quite fit 27B1b but is already available to him under 27B1a -- and most of the above will be unnecessary.) Often a player, especially a new player, is nervous to be talking to the TD away from the table, so it is often a good idea to assure the player that we are here because the other players are not entitled to know WHY he made the insufficient call. Either way, we go back to the table and I offer South the option of accepting the call, first explaining the offender's options should he not accept the insufficient bid. "South, you may accept 1♥ as though it were a legal call and the auction will continue from there, or you may reject it and East will have to make a legal call. If that call is 2♥, we proceed from there; if East substitutes a different call -- and double is not allowed here -- then West will have to pass throughout the auction."

East: Pass South: Pass West: 1♥ North: 1♠ East: 2♣ South: 2♠ At this point, West remembers that their side has agreed to play Drury even in competition and alerts East's 2♣ call. TD is called and allows South to ask about the alert and optionally change the 2♠ call to something else (Law 21B1a). South hears the explanation (3-card support, limit raise values) and chooses to change the 2♠ call to Pass. Is the original 2♠ raise UI to North? Before you decide that this should be put into the "too simple, even for McBruce" forum :D , note that the Laws definition of "withdrawn" includes actions that are 'canceled' but not actions that are 'changed,' which is the phrasing of 21B1a. Perhaps in error (and letting the players know that I wasn't sure), I told North (who asked) that I thought it UI. I'm still not sure. 21B1a also says that the change of call can be made "without other rectification for his side" but I think that just keeps 25B out of this situation. I see nothing in 16A that indicates that the original call is AI, but maybe I'm missing something. West predictably continued with 2♥ and North chose to bid 3♠ anyhow, with: ♠ J98652 ♥ AQ6 ♦ Q765 ♣ void East bid 4♥ and they made it. South's hand: ♠ AQ3 ♥ 85 ♦ J9432 ♣ T52

As an occasional playing club director myself, I think I would encourage players to call, even if I am about to play the board -- instead of placing a question mark. Even a playing director can usually tell it is a scoring error while approaching (because the North player is waving or looking puzzled at the traveler) and note that the board has yet to reach him -- now you can simply ask for the board number and line (or N-S pair) number, and check it when you play it. Or, as is usually the case, it is the most recent North that has made the dubious entry, so you get the player to make the enquiry when the round ends. Even if it is a serious problem and the TD needs to do some immediate investigating, you can recruit a substitute or simply give A+ to the opponents when the board gets to you (and decide whether you want to fine the offending North player as compensation). Better this than trying to work out what a mysterious question mark may mean at the end of the game. If "reasons for traveler question marks" were made into a question on Family Feud, the survey results would be something like: 22 - Wrong Vulnerability 18 - Score entered on Wrong Side 14 - Score Correct but Illegibly or Ambiguously Written 11 - Missing Asterisk(s) for (Re)Doubled Contracts 9 - Number in Wrong Column (between "Making" and "Down") 8 - No Discernible Problem but Every N-S After the Question Marker Blindly Assumes There Is One Somewhere 7 - Declarer Initial Letter Wrongly or (usually) Illegibly Entered 5 - Somebody Scored On My Line, so I'll Let You Figure Out Who and Score Way Down Here (Someone will follow along blindly compounding the problem) 4 - Wrong E-W Pair Number (most N-S players are trained to ignore this one) 2 - I Hate Travelers So I'm Going To Enter The Score But No Other Details At All Yes, I have encountered the last type. They are astonished to discover that they have earned a N-S ban when they are assigned E-W for the next seventeen weeks and ask why. :D

My application for the IQMB is above. Serves me right for quick-editing my example... :)

At least somebody has sought out the TD and raised the possibility of error. Some clubs at which I have directed have members of the International Question Mark Brigade (usually seated North, but if there is a late-arriving North who is obliged to sit East or West it is not unknown for him to forcefully express his views and force the addition). IQMB members love to add question marks to scores that they suspect when they view the traveler. (Usually the score is a good one for another North-South pair; strangely, they don't seem to notice an error that benefits N-S as often.) However, the IQMB considers it poor form for the TD to be called; instead, the TD is expected to rush out into the parking lot in search of the pair who can confirm the score when he finally gets the travelers at the end of the game (often after discovering it under someone's drink while people are leaving). Sometimes the reason for the question mark is a complete mystery: 3S....E....+1.......-----...170........? A few weeks ago I encountered a different type of traveler violation: 6N....N...+1.....1470 6D....N...+1.....1390 6N....N... = .....1460 6N....N...+1.....1470 3N....N...+4.....710 6N....N...+1.....1470 6N....N... = .....1460 6N....N...+1.....1470 6N....N...+1.....1480 The last player (scoring from the top down) decided that since he was playing in notrump he was deserving of an extra ten points. Because it was the last round, there were no members of the IQMB to express their disapproval. And when I entered it into ACBLScore, the program just assumed they were in 4S**+1, which it did not find unusual enough to express its disapproval with a beep or even an on-screen highlight. :)

When you poll players you are only showing them one hand and the auction up to the "what now?" point. So even in a club game where everyone is playing all the boards you can find people who have already played the set and choose people who didn't actually hold that hand. This is usually enough to get reasonable answers. Ask to see their scorecards; don't ask "have you played Board 21 yet?" And give them the problem with the instructions that "if you recognize this, ignore what happened at your table and consider it as a new problem." You're not so much looking for what they would do as you are seeking the various bids that they would seriously consider. I recall approaching a player once for a poll and saying "you hold this hand and your opponents bid uncontested to 6♠. Which opening leads do you consider?" He looked at the hand for 25 seconds and then said, "Six Spades by who?" :)

I do Daily Bulletins at many ACBL Regionals in the area, and spacefillers are always something you need to have prepared. For some time I used quizzes on events that happened on that date, but since the tournaments I cover tend to happen on the same dates each year, it got stale quickly. I recently discovered Wikiquote and switched to famous quotations (guess the speaker), and discovered this one from Sir Winston Churchill (which, along with others, but not the most obvious ones--can't have the answer completely obvious--I'll use in the next set in a few weeks): "Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price? Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?" For some reason, this made me laugh more than many of the more familiar other Churchill quips. You can just imagine him saying each of the first three very slowly, with complete sincerity, to an audience hanging on his every word and wondering if they can be true, only to have him shatter all three with the punch line. It would be a natural for bridge. The final sentence stays* and all you need to do is find three preceding bridge sentences where the obvious answer is NO: "Can one succeed at bridge simply by playing a lot, without reading or studying? Is it impossible to score well without the latest conventions and treatments? Are masterpoints an accurate measuring stick of a player's expertise and progress? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?" I'm sure you can do even better. And if so, I might use it in a future Daily Bulletin. * Actually, you might even change the last sentence to something absurd but bridge-related, like "Can a player make 3NT on a cross-ruff?"

OK, I cave. Reason for asking was that I had this incident pre-typed for a spacefiller in some Daily Bulletins I'll be doing later this month. It won't be hard to add that the tactic is actually illegal.

Here's the punch line: The Director allowed the player to look, and decided not to give him the advice that a better place to look would be the back of the red card. :P The player examined the scores on the back of the pass card, then put it back in the box and bid five diamonds. Shortly after, the TD left the table and came up to me and told me the story. "I think if I were at the table," I said, "it would not require much in the way of high cards to venture a double." Shows what I know. Five diamonds was passed out. Declarer made two overtricks. The field played 3NT and did better. :P

So the fact that Law 40 concerns Partnership Agreements is not relevant? The scoring table is certainly not a partnership agreement. Surely Law 40C3a does not make Law 77 unauthorized information for anyone who hasn't committed it to memory. If a Director asks a player for his ACBL player number during a hand, is he not allowed to look in his wallet? If a player forgets the order of the suits, is he allowed to consult the arrangement of the cards in his bid-box? If a Director makes a ruling during an auction and a player wishes to consult the Director's Law Book, thinking that he may be able to show the Director a different Law that applies, is that also disallowed? There has to be some limit here. I think the intent of Law 40C3a is to prevent players from using memory aids to remember their partnership agreements, and to require that information from the auction and the play be committed to memory without any sort of assistance until the hand is over. But the scoring table should never be unauthorized information.

At a recent ACBL sectional novice game, an auction was five rounds in and no pass cards had yet been played. The player due to bid next called the TD. "I want to know," he said in front of the other players (!), "if it is legal to look at the back of a pass card to see how much it will cost if I bid on and go down." I am not making this up. Furthermore, it gets better... But before I give the punch line, is this a Law 40C3 infraction?

You may have heard this before...it happened before bid-boxes were in common use. An elderly woman picked up a very good hand during a round at an NABC where her RHO was a Famous Bridge Name. To her surprise, FBN opened 7♦, all vulnerable. She thought for some time and finally decided to bid 7♠ with her 28 count. Partner tabled a Yarborough, but a miraculous one with trump support and just enough ruffing entries to allow her to take several finesses against FBN's high cards. Really good versions of the story have her making the 13th trick on an accidental squeeze that FBN was helpless to prevent. At the end of the hand, she breathed a deep breath and said to FBN "could I have a look, sir, at the hand you held? I really want to see what a vulnerable 7♦ first-chair preempt looks like." The FBN got up from his chair as the round was called. "Lady," he said wearily, "my bid was ONE DIAMOND." :)

The accused's explanation of the "more than 100 injuries" to his wife was that he accidentally inflicted the first one during some sort of argument or struggle while he was drunk, then, when he discovered his wife was dead, began drinking again and became despondent and stabbed her several more times "for all the trouble she had caused." To my amazement -- for I thought even OJ's alibi was better than Myrtle's -- I think this explanation tops Mrs Bennett's story that the gun went off accidentally four times while she was holding it.

Oh dear. In an two-session ACBL Swiss teams at a sectional, we probably take away about 1-3 boards per event because there simply isn't time. The vast majority of cases involve both sides at fault because nobody has let us know, and the board is simply scored as a push, regardless of the result at the other table. Law 86D says (even when both sides are partly to blame for the length of the match) that we must investigate and see if the result at the other table is favourable to one side. Such investigations must take place when time is at a premium (the other players are all waiting for the next set of pairings, or worse, waiting for the final results) and will involve a fair bit of analysis and probable argument when the decision is made. Sounds like 'fun.' B) 1) Do we wait for a team with a good board, unplayed at the other table, to complain, or investigate all removed boards? 2) Is it best to look at the board and decide what a normal result might be, or ask the complaining side how they think they have a winning position? 3) If a side claims damage due to a canceled board at the other table and in fact they have no case, can the TDs issue a PP for an 86D appeal without merit? :)

I agree that the TD does not investigate intent. But you must investigate whether there is a demonstrable bridge reason for the tempo break, and if we set the bar so high that nobody can think their way through the logic of a new and unfamiliar structure, we're in effect penalizing players for opting to play conventions that they have not become thoroughly familiar with, by forcing them to take a guess without thinking too long. What the majority is saying here is "sorry East, I have to apply this penalty, not because I think you intended to deceive, but because it was a possibility and N-S were damaged." That is all well and good and keeps things civil. But to get to that point you've first decided not to believe East's reason for thinking. I agree that there may be situations in which East should not be believed: obviously this would be the case if he held a weaker hand. But if it can be confirmed that he has never played constructive weak twos, I think it is quite possible he has a case. The wording of Law 73F indicates that the bar is quite low; all he needs is any demonstrable bridge reason for thinking as long as he did. I think a good TD should make a judgment, weighing all the relevant factors, and not start from the assumption that East was trying to deceive and is lying to you. But then, I'm an optimist. B)

So we are all saying that considering a raise is not a demonstrable bridge reason for the hesitation? A raise to 3♠ is not an invite of any kind, it is designed to make the opponent's job more difficult. For many players it deserves consideration on those cards when partner opens a constructive weak two in first chair on these colours. I think I would want better evidence that East's hesitation was meant to deceive before I applied Law 73F. In fact, the third post of this thread says that East was unfamiliar with constructive weak twos and needed time to consider what sort of hands West might have. If 73F inhibits this type of thought process, it may prove to be the best weapon available against the proliferation of conventions.

Most of the discussion of 86D so far has concerned duplication errors. What about this scenario? N-S make a slam off two cashable aces after a defensive miscue on Board 4 of an 8-board Swiss team match played as most of them are here in the ACBL, without preduplicated boards. A caddy is called to move the four completed boards to the other table and only two come back. At the other table, the director is called three times with complaints about the slow play of North and South, and ultimately Board 4 (the last board in the set at the other table, having played 5-8 first) is removed by the TD for lack of time, as most of the match results have already been reported before they are finished Board 3. Is there a Law 86D case here? What if there had been no prior complaints about slow play until the board was taken away?