jeffford76

What is it you think happens to the other contestants' scores when a board is scored as "Average"? It's not any different than this - they are compared in a smaller set of comparisons, then Neuberged.

This has been discussed many times before. There is nothing illegal about this approach. Many people feel it is rude, and many other people think it's rude to say that it's rude since it's legal. Personally I think if you're still thinking about this trick, you shouldn't detach a card, and if you're thinking about the rest of the hand to come you should play face up and just leave the card face up at the end of the trick so that other people can spend the time thinking with the same information you have.

I'm not sure I buy that the MI affected North's call. Their hand is really a pass of a major suit preempt, but a bid over a minor suit preempt? The TD needs to make clear that after MI is corrected it's not carte blanche for the other side to change their call - it has to be the case that the MI is relevant.

I think it's tricky when one opponent asks for advice, and the fault is with their partner. In general you wouldn't point out an opponent's mistake unprompted, but it's difficult to be polite to the questioner without doing so. If you can manage it, I think it's better to say, "I don't think you could have done anything" preferably without any undue emphasis on "you". I might answer more completely away from the table later if the opportunity arises. In your situation I can't see why you need any response to the person who would never make the right play.

I think it is clear that the score for NS gets adjusted to 2SX down a lot. It was less clear to me what to do with EW. At the time after consulting with another director who did not think 6S met the wild or gambling standard, I ruled that as the EW score instead. I was hoping that there would be more interest here in that question to be able to better calibrate my standard for wild or gambling. Despite the comment from bluejak, East is certainly a strong player, far better than me, and he was playing with a client that could have an enormous range of hands for 3S (and who would be unlikely to cooperate effectively with a more subtle approach). But suppose that the ruling is that 6S is a wild bid. I want to make sure I understand the adjustment. Here is how I would go about it, and please point out any error. In order to determine the cost of the wild bid, we look at the normal result without the bid. Here there is some question whether that is +170 or +620. In a situation like this, where it is not clear whether the correct action is to pass 3S or raise to 4S is a side that made a wild bid treated like an offending side with the assumption they would make the choice that is worse for them? Let's say that you decide that the normal call is 4S. This means that the wild bid caused self inflicted damage of whatever the difference is in matchpoints between +620 and -200. From a practical point of view, is the board scored as +1100 both ways and then a matchpoint penalty applied so that the other EW pairs score against the +1100, not the -200 or is there some other procedure? Presumably if you decide that the normal call is pass, then the procedure is the same, but using as damage the matchpoint difference between +170 and -200?

[hv=pc=n&w=sk97hakqt72d3caqt&d=n&v=b&b=13&a=2dp3d]133|200[/hv] This came up at the club today - matchpoints, typical club field.

[hv=pc=n&s=s82hkj53dkqj873c6&w=st964ht42dt6c8752&n=s73hq7da952cjt943&e=sakqj5ha986d4cakq&d=n&v=b&b=13&a=p2c(strong)2s(C%20or%20%5BD+H%5D)ppd3dppdppp]399|300[/hv] North and South had verbally agreed "Suction over strong clubs", and south wrote on the convention card "Suction over strong 1C/2C" and north wrote "Suction over strong clubs". Before the opening lead, South informed E/W of a failure to alert, and after being given by the director the option to change the final pass, West bid 3S and East raised to 6S which was short 2 tricks. By agreement, the pass of 2S is neutral, and an immediate double by West would have been penalty. East's first double was takeout, and subsequent double was undiscussed. However East is a strong player and West is not, so it is unclear if West would have understood the bids the same way (as potentially evidenced by the 3S call). After hearing East answer, though, West would have just agreed. To what should the score be adjusted, and is it the same for both sides? ACBL, so no weighting.

This is certainly true for some of the events. We weren't going to run a qualifying pairs which by rule can't be stratified without something in parallel for the B players who would stay home rather than play without strats. Similarly although the BAM is stratified, we found that a lot of the B players were more comfortable playing pairs or Swiss.

In general if you make a mistake in the bidding, you can attempt to make up for it later. The exception is if you have unauthorized information from your partner. So, for example, in this case if south asked what 5D showed and was told "0 or 3 keycards" then the correction would not be allowed. It appears from the description that there was no UI, so the 6S bid is allowed.

One of the allowed things under "Competitive" is "Defense to conventional calls". A takeout double is a convention, ergo you can play whatever you want over it. (As with most things unless this is after a NT or weak-2 bid with too wide a range.) I don't see anything that allows conventional bidding after a penalty double that isn't allowed absent the double.

I think it makes more sense to tag the weak/strong distinction on lower end (or average) instead of upper end. No matter what the range the lower values come up more often, so that's what you want your defense to be geared toward. That is, if someone is playing 13-15, the 13's will happen a lot more than the 14's and the 14's will happen a lot more than the 15's. My preference is to play that if it could be 13 (even 13+-16 -- most people who upgrade enough to add the upgrades to their range upgrade a lot and thus have a lot of 13's) to play my weak defense and otherwise play my strong one.

The events that get run at ACBL sectionals are up to the units running the tournaments. If you (generic, not mycroft specifically) want to see a particular event, either convince your local board, or run for a position. In Seattle we did a revamp of our sectionals a couple years ago to add variety to the schedule. Over the course of the four sectionals we have a 1 and 2 session BAM, a two session qualifier pairs, an IMP pairs, and a four session KO in addition to the normal 1-2 session MP pairs and 2-session Swiss games. We also have several 0-750 and 0-2000 events that have greatly increased attendance in that crowd.

If a pair fails to alert in an auction where the rules require an alert, it doesn't matter what they've been previously told.

I would have bid 6C / 7C. I realized maybe we should be playing in spades, but I figured if I started low there would be enough competition that I might not get to ask at all, and I wanted to get level right.

This is in fact the auction my partnership had: 4NT (specific aces) - 5NT (2) - 7NT.

This is certainly correct, and I appreciate you writing it all out when I was too lazy to. :) I don't think it's inconsistent with my statement that they'll probably get average-plus. To award an assigned adjusted score requires you to consider the auction backed up to the illegal call, and assume that they were playing a completely different legal system, decide what would have happened. (Or, more accurately what the most favorable likely result was for the non-offenders and most unfavorable at all probable result for the offenders.) Most of these cases are going to fit the criterion that the "possibilities are numerous or not obvious".

I think you're better off attempting to play the board and asking at the end. There's really not much the director can do in the middle of the auction. (For example, they aren't going to be made to change systems in the middle of the auction.) So try to get a good board, and if you don't you'll probably be given average plus if it turns out the method wasn't legal.

Thanks for the responses. I was curious whether the failure to double 5C would tend to deny the queen. On the actual hand dummy has running hearts opposite declarer's stiff and dummy has a stiff high diamond, so the only way to beat the hand is to lead a red suit on the go, and for partner to lead the other one when they win the trump ace. They can't pull trump and get back to dummy, and if they try to run the hearts first you get an extra trump trick. Apologies, but I don't remember the exact hands.

[hv=pc=n&w=sj93h86d752ckjt62&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1sp2hp3d(shows%20extras)p3sp3n(mild%20slam%20interest)p4cp4np5c(1%20or%204)p6sppp]133|200[/hv] IMPs->VPs, 28 board match (1 of 6 matches) What do you lead?

This is on the alert chart at http://www.acbl.org/play/alertchart.html as specifically "No Alert" under "Opener’s and Responder’s Rebids": A 1NT or 2NT rebid that implies a balanced hand (may contain one or two four-card majors) The 1M calls after 1C - 1D aren't there specifically, but I believe not alertable. In general in the ACBL if the hands you have for you bid are expected hands there is no alert even if there are other standard hands your partnership excludes. In this case the hands you would bid 1M on are hands other people would bid 1M on, so the negative inference that you don't have a balanced hand isn't alerted, although obviously explained if asked about your auction.

This varies by jurisdiction. Last time I was involved in a Swiss tie in the ACBL (top 16 advancing to a KO for GNTs) the tiebreak was total VP's of the the teams you played in the second half - presumably intended to discourage the "Swiss gambit", but I never understood why this was more fair than total VP's of all the teams you played. Total VP's of all the teams you played was the tiebreak in the current Juniors world championship. In general I think something involving opponent strength is more fair than just using the head-to-head result.

My experience is that one-half of a partnership playing system on over the double is quite mainstream around here. :)

As many of you guessed 2D was not alerted. 3C was passed in a flash. I was curious what the LA's were. In practice 4C also makes, but not 3NT or any number of hearts, so for ruling purposes it only matters if a reasonable number of people bid 3NT or 4H. The director ruled table result stands, and said 5 of 6 people polled passed 3C and the other bid 3H and passed 4C. They actually told us who was polled - is that normal? I thought it was interesting that all of the people polled were substantially better players than the people at the table. So they were polling people who probably would have passed the double, probably wouldn't have agreed to play these methods, and knew that you needed a way to show a strong 1-suiter if partner didn't sit.

[hv=pc=n&w=skq4hj9752d9752cj&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1n(11+-14)ppd(At%20least%20top%20of%20range)p(No%205-card%20suit)2d(Transfer)p3cp]133|200[/hv] You're playing in a new (3-4 previous sessions) partnership. You have agreed to play "systems on" over doubles of opponent's NT bids. In your NT system, 1NT - 2D - 3C shows a max with 3 hearts and a concentration of values in clubs. Do you assume this applies here? And regardless, what do you bid?

I was wondering if anyone would bring this up. The actual ruling given was that score stands because the 4S bid was bad enough to be unrelated to the misinformation (and that they should have known that the opponents didn't really have an agreement of "support" anyway given the table behavior). There was also a sense that it wasn't kosher for the partner of the 4S bidder to be involving the director since if there was really a problem the 4S bidder should have called. I was a little surprised by the ruling, so was curious what other opinions would be. My impression in the past is that my local area is much harsher in general on the non-offenders in misinformation cases than consensus here. Or maybe it's an ACBL thing rather than just a local thing. I wasn't involved except to be asked my opinion about the hand by the director about a week after it happened.