jeffford76

Yes, I did this too of course. I didn't need any help with that part. :)

I had to make a ruling this weekend in a fairly normally happening in club bridge. Someone asked fairly pointed questions about the opponent's auction while their partner was selecting a lead, the questions suggested a particular lead, and that is the suit the partner led. So the only difficult decision is whether any other less successful lead is a logical alternative. My initial instinct on the hand was that of course another suit was a logical alternative, but that I would still do a poll to be sure. Surprisingly the first three people asked all led the same thing as at the table, and ranged from "obvious to lead that" to "I would think about the other suit, but I would never lead it". My question is, how do you decide that you've asked enough peers that you can fairly decide that something is not a logical alternative since the threshold is so low, especially in the case where people are clearly considering, but rejecting the alternative? I know three people isn't statistically significant, and at the time I asked three more before eventually ruling that there wasn't a logical alternative to the selected lead, but I'm still not sure that it wouldn't have come out the other way if I'd happened to be able to reach a different set of people on the phone.

I wish that this were the argument being made by the ACBL. I don't agree with it (as equally uninformed as you, no doubt), but it indicates comprehension of how security tradeoffs should be made.

In general to evaluate the effectiveness of a security measure you have to decide how effective it is and how annoying it is. The more annoying it is, the more effective it had better be, and if it's not particularly effective, then it better not be annoying. The argument against the cell phone ban has always been that it is not effective and that it is annoying, and therefore shouldn't exist. In particular, by "not effective", I mean that for a player who is willing to actively cheat, there are many ways to communicate illicit information, and removing their cell phone doesn't particularly increase the difficulty of them doing so. It is also not effective because it does not have effective enforcement. Do you really think with the current rules that someone who wants to cheat with a cell phone won't bring their phone into the room anyway? I won't get into the argument about whether it is or isn't annoying to not be allowed to carry a cell phone. Many people think that the ban is annoying, and you're not going to convince them that it's not, although certainly in the past people have tried. It's not as catchy as your statement, but I would say that if we can't do enough to make a noticeable difference, and the things we do annoy people, then we shouldn't bother doing anything.

Assuming this was addressed to me, no. Screens are used to mitigate unauthorized information. They seem to do it well. This doesn't seem particularly relevant to a discussion about how to deal with intentional cheating. I think there are many people who inadvertently use UI who wouldn't dream of stacking a deck or looking at hand records or getting information from a confederate or any of the other things that require *actively* cheating.

Yes, essentially, despite you calling it ridiculous, and assuming that the methods are equally easy. As long as there are easy ways to cheat, then banning some of them just steers people to the others.

Or alternately, the fact that this piece of information is so easy to convey in 100 other ways explains the pointlessness of the ban on cell phones.

I disagree that there is no need to worry about UI. It's entirely possible that the balancing bid was going to make or go for a lesser minus than 2C, and that the person who bid 2C had pass as a logical alternative over the balancing bid.

It depends on West's hand, and what he might have done had 2C been alerted as inverted and then passed. But the most likely ruling is an adjusted score to NS in 2C making whatever that makes. You would also need to check if NS may have used the unauthorized information from the lack of an alert, but it's unlikely this will lead to a better result for EW.

The companion hand is x AKxx Kxx AKQ10x. At the table 3NT was bid over 3C. You can make 6D, although it suffices to be in 5 of a minor. I think X is better with the other hand, but I was curious whether you can still get to the right spot.

[hv=pc=n&w=sat9h84dqt754cj93&d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1sdp2d2s3cp]133|200[/hv]

As Michael said, they don't add things very often. If you're considering coming to a national tournament, almost all of the open national events will use the midchart. Note that the midchart has variance in what you can play depending on the length of the rounds. For example multi is not allowed in pair games even though it's allowed in the big KO's and Swiss events. The exceptions are the Fast Pairs, which uses the general chart, and the Spingold and Vanderbilt which use the super chart. If you're playing super chart methods, you have to pre-register them and your opponents get time to look at them the day before. Regional events (which include the side events at nationals) are much more variable. If a KO bracket has a high enough masterpoint level of participation, you can play midchart, and if not, you can't. If there's an A/X event that will also be midchart, but an open event will be GCC.

This is what I had assumed as well, but a good local player surprised me by saying that it showed the long clubs hand, so I wanted to poll more widely.

Ok, added.

Because the convention charts in the ACBL aren't based on logic, they're based on what people have historically played, and what methods people have applied to get added.

[hv=d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1d1sdp2hp3c]133|100[/hv] Assume that you have agreed to play 2/1 with negative doubles, but have had no further discussion about this sequence for the purposes of answering the question. (Although, to be clear, you are not playing non-forcing free bids.) If you think something non-standard is better, please comment.

I was surprised by what one of my sometimes partners claimed was "expert standard" in this auction. I was also surprised how much he seemed to think it mattered which way you play it. Is this a position where one meaning is clearly better?

And sadly the district both jillybean and I are in is running all the flights the same day.

Yes. Basically the question is whether you'd rather play a team once or best of three. If you're 50% to beat them it doesn't matter. If you're above 50% you'd prefer best of three, and if you're below 50% you'd prefer once.

I think you've left out the case where A doesn't tank, and also wins the winner's final. They are 50% to win the winner's bracket, and then from there it depends on whether B or C wins the loser's match to advance against D. In the pathological case where C is 100% against B, then A will play D twice more, having to win one, a 75% proposition, for a total winning chance of 37.5%. If they lose their match to D in the winners final (50%), then they have to beat D twice (25%), for an additional 12.5%, bringing their chance of winning to 50% regardless of whether they tank.

What would be a situation where it would be advantageous to lose in a double elimination tournament? (There may well be one, but I can't think of one.)

It would be interesting if you were allowed to declare your flight in a stratified event (obviously not to lower it) so you could just remove yourself from flight C if you wished. I suppose that would just lead to people declaring high to avoid winning points to stay in flight C for the things that award money.

If no natural meaning is alertable, this seems like a good place to always ask the range to avoid creating UI by only sometimes asking.

As long as the format is flawed, people will dump matches. The next ones just won't be so obvious about it.

I don't think he's reading it wrongly - I think it doesn't say what they meant for it to say. But the example makes clear what you're supposed to do regardless of whether it's written correctly in the actual rule.