jeffford76

Not too surprisingly, regardless of what you think I should be playing, I have posted the actual agreement that was in effect when the hand came up.

[hv=d=s&v=f&s=skh104dq874cak9654]133|100|Scoring: MPs[/hv] Unopposed bidding. You play minorwood, but only if the suit was agreed before the 4m bid.

I think it is not rude, and it is certainly not a breach of law. If you are dummy, and you play each card declarer calls for in a timely manner, that is all the attention you need to give. It's quite surprising to me, actually, how many people are bothered by this. Now if you can't actually read / puzzle / knit and keep up with the cards too, then sure, it's rude. But presumably you can tell whether that's the case.

What about the related auction (1S) X (2D) ... where 2D is a transfer to hearts? What are 2H, 2S, direct X, and P now and X when 2H comes back around?

If the best possible result for north south is to push the board, and it didn't seem like you were considering any scores better than +720, then it can't possibly be right to decide the possibilities are too numerous and award them 3 imps.

Technically the director should have offered a choice to declarer, but the choice declarer will make is obvious and the one that was enforced. It's a really bad idea to play out of turn as defender. LAW 57 - PREMATURE LEAD OR PLAY A. Premature Play or Lead to Next Trick When a defender leads to the next trick before his partner has played to the current trick, or plays out of turn before his partner has played, the card so led or played becomes a major penalty card, and declarer selects one of the following options. He may: 1. require offender’s partner to play the highest card he holds of the suit led, or 2. require offender’s partner to play the lowest card he holds of the suit led, or 3. forbid offender’s partner to play a card of another suit specified by declarer.

This ruling is wrong. Law 27C: "If the offender replaces his insufficient bid before the Director has ruled on rectification, unless the insufficient bid is accepted as A allows the substitution stands. The Director applies the relevant foregoing section to the substitution." Basically this means they are stuck with 5D, and either the director rules that 3D first did not convey any extra information and so the auction continues normally, or that it did, and so 5D is the final contract. Depending on agreements either of these could be right, but what the director did definitely isn't.

I haven't found this one to be true. I've gotten an adjustment at least once when I played 4M down on the bad break when I'd have played 3NT with a correct alert of 2D/majors. In fact I'd find it very strange if there weren't an adjustment in a situation like this. Plenty of people still play natural overcalls here.

[hv=d=n&v=b&s=s108xxha10xxdaxxcxx]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] 1H (X) 2H* (3S) 4H (4S) 5H (X) AP * alerted, not asked, but systemically showing less than a constructive raise 2H bidder forgot the system, but knows what he's shown once the alert happens as he plays transfers here with several partners (including this one :) ). 5HX makes. Do you adjust? Is P a LA instead of 5H, and if not, is 5H suggested over X?

To follow up on this, I think you should give the east hand to some players without the mistaken explanation to see if they all double. But I suspect pass isn't a logical alternative.

It wasn't actually. It was a response to "The player chose not to bid 6. In so doing, he complied with the laws. It's unfortunate that he got a worse score than he might have, but this isn't the only situation in which that's possible." But I agree with your new ruling in this case. I think there's still an element of unfairness if the likelihood of slam being bid is something other than 50-50, but under ACBL elections there's no way to remedy that.

I don't really think it's a "choice" not to bid 6 if he's going to get the same score from the TD whether or not he bids 6. In what other situation is a player required by the laws to do something that hurts his side when his side has committed no irregularity? I also still don't see why you don't think "unauthorized information may have affected the result" if the player bids 5C. Being required to choose the least suggested LA sure seems like affecting the result to me.

Honestly I don't think there's a fair way to adjudicate this under ACBL rules. The "correct" think to do is to work out how likely he was to go on absent the UI and weight the score. I was hoping someone had a more clever solution than "Tough luck, even though you did nothing wrong, you get a worse score."

There is a clear implication here that when the TD deems that the player in receipt of UI has taken advantage of it, the score should be adjusted. I think that UI affecting the result does not require UI to be taken advantage of. If I bid 5C out of obligation to the UI law, the UI still affected my result. (Half the time otherwise I would have scored higher.) That's certainly fair for when my partner gave me the UI, but not when some random person at another table did.

Called the director. Law 16 C. Extraneous Information from Other Sources 1. When a player accidentally receives unauthorized information about a board he is playing or has yet to play, as by looking at the wrong hand; by overhearing calls, results or remarks; by seeing cards at another table; or by seeing a card belonging to another player at his own table before the auction begins, the Director should be notified forthwith, preferably by the recipient of the information. A more interesting question is what should the director do? Suppose you judge it equally likely the person would bid and not bid the slam without the information, but you're in the ACBL so you can't award a weighted score.

S 102 H 9754 D A742 C J65 Assuming you hold this hand opposite the double, what's your call? EDIT: I mean after the second double, assuming a pass after 2C.

If your preference is different than what you'd expect undiscussed, please elaborate.

You haven't said where you're from. The ACBL alert chart includes these as alertable: Natural 2D, 2H or 2S, if intermediate or better Natural weak or intermediate 2C The interpretation here is that what this really means is if the bid includes intermediate hands that the bids should be alerted. So if you're there you should be alerting these everywhere, not just the club.

Because if your question reveals misinformation in the auction (including, for example, a failure to alert an alertable bid), the director should be called. Then whoever made the last call for your side is likely to be allowed to change it. This chance goes away once the lead is faced.

How do you play 1m - 1M - 2M - 3m? What about 1m - 1M - 2M - 3NT? (In particular, if "natural", does the game choice depend more on NT suitability or just 3/4 cards in the major?)

LAW 57 PREMATURE LEAD OR PLAY A. Premature Play or Lead to Next Trick When a defender leads to the next trick before his partner has played to the current trick or plays out of turn before his partner has played, the card so led or played becomes a major penalty card, and declarer selects one of the following options. He may: 1. require offender’s partner to play the highest card he holds of the suit led, or 2. require offender’s partner to play the lowest card he holds of the suit led, or 3. forbid offender’s partner to play a card of another suit specified by declarer. So if declarer knows what two suits LHO has left, they can forbid playing the suit of the extra card, and thus force the play of the winner. Note that this is true even if LHO knew which card to keep. Even if declarer can't do this, the normal UI laws apply, which do require the director to do the difficult task you mention. Although in general you'd have to be *very* convincing for the director to rule you were getting it right anyway. (Especially given that you could have already claimed the trick if you knew what was happening.) The first time this happened to me as declarer, LHO just played their winner to the twelfth trick without a director call, which is certainly the most pleasant way for this to get resolved.

In case it matters, it's all white at IMPs. Edit: Sorry, 1S should be 2S, obviously.

Does anyone know how Jack's claim checker works? For example if all I have left is A10x opposite KJx, can I claim since double dummy I can't lose?

Would that be JRLOL?

The plain text of the law does not allow substitution of the negative double. However guidance from the ACBL is to be more liberal in applying it. From http://www.acbl.org/assets/documents/about...on-Minutes.pdf: After review of the report of the Law 27 survey as reported by Matt Smith, there was a consensus to continue to encourage tournament directors to be reasonably flexible/liberal in allowing a replacement call without immediate rectification (penalty) when that replacement call is more precise or similar in meaning to the insufficient bid (Law 27B1.) However, if without assistance gained through the insufficient bid the result could well have been different and in consequence the non-offending side is damaged, the director applies Law 27D.