sailoranch

http://i.imgur.com/JaZiZ6fl.png http://i.imgur.com/WjpZIg3l.png http://i.imgur.com/pBaGOSOl.png http://i.imgur.com/iXFR7bql.png http://i.imgur.com/z3l5AB9l.png So sneaky!

Alex: Ooooh, I'm sorry. The correct response is: What is worried?

As an aside, AIBA is using its status as gatekeeper of Olympic eligibility to expand into professional boxing. They are reverting to the ten-point-must system and dropping headgear for the top amateur men.

Certainly true, but I think it's somewhat of a knock-on effect that's developed alongside the professional ranks. Promoters try to whip up the best amateur talent, and Olympic/amateur success helps to sell fighters early in their professional careers. Also, judges often judge both amateur and pro (or have judged the other in the past).

Boxing is easy. There's a lot of money at stake, the oversight is extremely lax (and splintered), and the shadiness doesn't seem to drive away spectators. In figure skating, a lot has to do with the old scoring system, which was preferential (read: matchpoints). So a judge could easily manipulate the standings without giving ridiculous scores. In the case of the 2002 pairs event, the balance of the nationalities of the judges created a situation where a single judge could expect to be a swing vote, and thus easily bought (in this case, by organized crime figures). This was relatively recent and it was the Olympics, so figure skating hasn't managed to shed the stink. They changed the system so that the judges have to grade several different elements, so the scoring is a bit more predictable and scores that are out of line with the other judges will get trimmed. On the other hand, they made the judging anonymous in order to protect the judges from pressure from their own countries' federations (or mob bosses), but the lack of transparency doesn't help their case with the general public.

Boxing (and several other combat "contests") are clearly not sports. Also, it's not like we've never seen a football (soccer) match determined by a referee's penalty decision. Or a basketball game determined by a foul decision, or a baseball game determined by an umpire's inconsistent strike zone, or an NFL game decided by pass interference, etc. These are all, at least in practice, subjective judgments that have a huge influence on the outcome. I'm also wary of laying down criteria that give figure skating and gymnastics a lesser claim to being sports than competitive eating and beer pong. And if the issue is the legitimacy of determining winners and losers based on subjective scoring, why shouldn't we declare things like debating, chili cook-offs, Iron Chef, and the World Livestock Auctioneering Championship not to be valid as contests at all? If the issue is the prospect of corruption, that seems to be a common problem with governance or sports subculture that isn't limited to subjectively scored sports. (case study: Tour de France)

Curlers probably think the same thing about bridge.

This was discussed extensively in the topic I linked to earlier. I was taking your position, but the accepted view seems to be that the irregularity is the original instance of MI rather than the call based on MI. So in adjusting, the entire auction has to be reconstructed with the correct explanation rather than from a later point more beneficial to the NOS.

I don't see why you wouldn't award -1400 in the ACBL or a weighted score elsewhere. Of course the weighting factors are hard to determine because they are always somewhat arbitrary. The MP scores would be super hard to be confident about if the board is yet to be played at another table. On the other hand, if the event is over and the weights don't affect the MP score at all, then why the need to resort to an artificial score at all when you could just commit to some weights and be done with it.

I don't get it. Is there any situation where the possible results are too numerous or not obvious enough to award an assigned score, but obvious enough and not too numerous to conclude that the NOS would matchpoint exactly 90%? Just pick a result or weight several of them and give an assigned adjusted score, which is essentially what's happening in your mind anyway.

There was a similar discussion some time ago here.

I'm not sure where to put this, but I guess it's related to laws. I played in a sectional pairs game yesterday. After giving one of the hands to a friend, he told me he played the exact same board at a regional last week and proceeded to give me correct details of other boards from the set. I've already informed the director, so they're aware. But what is supposed to happen in this situation?

Sorry I misunderstood. The discussion was aimed at a situation where the adjustment for a call or play based on MI would be worse than the adjustment for the later infraction. This was the OP case. Here you said the proper weighted ruling was: If West asks South to explain the 2♠ call again and receives the correct info this time, then West can be confident that there's been a misbid and passes. If West receives the same MI, then the adjustment for the latter infraction would be 100% 2♠-2 (IMO), the expectation had the second infraction not occurred.

The basis in law is that offender is still required to give a correct explanation in response to a question. 20F1 and 20F2, along with 40B4. Whether it should be in Law is another matter, but I've made clear my views as to the proper remedy.

Right, the premise is that the adjustment under Law 21B3 or 47E2b for a call or play based on MI is to adjust for the initial infraction. This means that the adjustment you would receive if you don't ask can be worse than the result you expect when you ask later and the opponents give the correct answer. As we've established, if we call this an infraction, NOS are entitled to the more favorable adjustment. Yes, it's silly that you can get a better ruling by asking a question you're already supposed to know the answer to, but it's a result of the premise I mentioned. Disallowing NOS to "gain" through this means they are stuck with the MI and will get a worse result than they would have received had they been properly informed the second time, and the only way for them to achieve the best result is to guess they've been given MI.

The consequence is that if it's not an infraction, those laws no longer require the offender to correct the MI. Well, 20F4 is still supposed to, but as I was thoroughly chastised for discussing before, this requires that offender remember his agreement and be honest enough to admit to it. And since there's no actual infraction, Law 23 does not provide protection against, dare I say it, someone who would take advantage. The argument is that the second instance of MI is not an infraction because NOS is making the same decision before and after the repeat MI, but I disagree that that is the criterion for determining whether something is an infraction or not. And there is actual damage done when the NOS would get a better result with a corrected explanation than they would expect from an adjustment for the first instance of MI.

For what it's worth, I don't think this is unethical at all. We're asking a question, we're supposed to get the correct answer, and all we're hoping to get is the result that we would achieve with the correct explanation. If the opponents have a problem, I would call the director and explain exactly what I was doing. As I've mentioned, this does leave a bad taste in my mouth, but only because it's an exercise necessary to protect our equity, not because we're doing anything wrong. Intuitively, I think this is the equitable ruling, but I am still left wondering what I should have been saying this entire thread. So before I go throw myself a party, I wanted to verify that you noticed that without the initial alert and MI, NOS would definitely reach 4♥-1. The sample case was basically this scenario, only with the NOS as the declaring side. The difference, of course, is that the defense isn't required to correct the MI at the end of the auction, so no second infraction. The thought was that declarer might protect himself by asking the opponent to explain the call again, and if he gets the same MI, it would create a new infraction and point at which to adjust. It's not clear to me why this is. Does the obligation to provide a correct explanation expire once you've already given MI? In other words, does something override 20F1 and 20F2 (with 40B4)? Thanks for both of your replies.

Sigh. Law 20F requires a player to provide explanations about methods when asked, and 40B4 allows for an adjustment when they're incorrect and there's damage. Obviously, giving MI the first time, even if you don't know the correct answer, is an infraction. But failing to adjust for repeating MI the second time implies that those laws now operate differently. And calling it an infraction but adjusting for the initial MI instead conflicts with how we're told to adjust in Law 12. Earlier in the thread, you said that a repeat of the MI is in fact an infraction, but one that doesn't merit a different adjustment because the laws are unclear as to what to do when there are multiple adjustments. You seem to have accepted that when there are multiple infractions with the same OS, then the NOS gets the adjustment most favorable to them. In this case, if you're still treating the repeat MI as an infraction, it should entitle NOS to the best adjustment. You said that if I were misinformed, I don't need to get them to repeat the MI. This implies that you would adjust the same way whether or not I ask them to do this. But I am still unclear on how you would adjust and your reasoning behind it. My questions, in reference to Zel's hypothetical earlier in the thread: Are you adjusting to 3NT= whether or not South asks opps to repeat the MI? Are you adjusting to 4H-1 whether or not South asks opps to repeat the MI? If so, what is the basis in the laws for saying the repeat MI is either not an infraction or not subject to adjustment? Are you adjusting to 3NT= when the opps repeat the MI but 4H-1 when South does not ask?

Is this because we're adjusting to 3NT= regardless? Or because the obligation to give a correct answer to a question no longer applies once you've given the MI? If it's the latter case, what is the legal basis for saying so?

Just confirm what the Laws as they are say I should do if I expect that I'm misinformed. Say we're just before the play of 3NT in Zel's situation. Should I ask opps to repeat the MI to protect myself, expecting a later adjustment to 3NT=? Or do I need to base my play on whether I believe I've been misinformed or not?

No, the honor system is not a useful system in this situation. We do not have an honor system in bridge. We have bidding boxes and screens and cell phone bans. There are laws that allow the TD to adjust even when an infraction could have been on purpose, so we don't have to ask the offender to confess. We see people trying to blatantly use UI or give patently false statements to the TD all the time, and these are things that can be caught. So I don't agree with the suggestion that trusting solely on people's honesty is an adequate way to protect non-offenders, especially when that's the only way they'll be caught. And that is not all I'm saying. This business about honesty and the human condition distracts from the fact that this issue with 20F4 or repeating the MI when asked is rendered moot if we're adjusting to the call or play based on MI rather than the MI itself. Failure to comply would then have little to gain.

If the only evidence that the police could collect is that you admit going over the speed limit, then yes. If there were a radar gun that we could point at a player to determine at what point he remembered his agreement, then 20F4 would be enforceable.

We have conflicting ideas about what unenforceable means. No, you wouldn't, because there's no way to prove it. If the only way of proving this infraction is having the player admit to it, and we're going to toss the player if he does so, then is he going to admit it? Assuming your name isn't Jack Bauer. I see what you did there. You used "sincere" in two different senses, the first being "in truth" and the second being "honest." It doesn't follow that someone who "sincerely" forgets his agreement is necessarily a sincere person who wouldn't try to recover at a later point. First of all, these are not two choices for a player in the same situation. These are two different situations: the player ostensibly remembers his agreement in the first and doesn't remember in the second. Also, purposefully giving the MI throughout would have little to gain in relation to giving the correct explanation throughout when the TD adjusts. Failing to correct MI already given has plenty to gain in relation to not correcting it. First, one matter of law I'm still disputing is that a repeat of the MI in response to a question is not an infraction. I don't see how this is justified. If we're ruling that way just to avoid Silly Town, then the same argument would justify saying 40B4 or 21B3 or something allows us to adjust at the point the NOS used the MI. Second, I am not accusing anyone in particular of cheating. I'm not making a ruling on the assumption that someone is cheating. I am saying that there is a scenario in which someone could cheat (knowingly breach 20F4) and easily get away with it. Is there a problem with accusing a hypothetical cheater of hypothetically cheating in a hypothetical scenario? I am asserting that there are players who would take advantage in this situation. I am also saying that the Laws, in general, provide rectification even if a player could have knowingly gained through an irregularity, and this would be an exception, because an irregularity either has not actually occurred or because there's no way of proving there was one. That there is such a situation, combined with the other weird consequences, is evidence that we're interpreting the law incorrectly to begin with. (And yes, if that interpretation is indeed correct, then blah blah other forum.)

Right, and the natural consequence is that Law 20F4 is not enforceable. We have a scheme where a player would get +600 with the correction and -100 without the correction, and an opponent could knowingly flout 20F4 and have no way of being caught. Yes, there are players who would try to gain advantage in this situation, and part of the reason there aren't more is because Law 23 and similar provisions entitle a NOS to an adjustment in most situations where a player could purposely infringe. My broader point is that a player can fail to give a correct explanation and earn a much better score thereby, whether he does so purposefully or not. It has been argued that it's not even an infraction for a player to provide MI in response to a question if he has already given that MI previously in the deal. And even if it were an infraction, the NOS is only getting the favorable adjustment by suspecting he's been given MI and knowing that he can gain by asking a question to which he's already supposed to know the answer.