jallerton

Thanks for the replies. A very strong player failed to find the winning defence at the table, and it did not seem obvious to me why he should have done so. This was the actual layout: [hv=pc=n&s=s5hkj2dakqt4cat64&w=sqt6ha73d853cqj97&n=sak9872ht86d96c32&e=sj43hq954dj72ck85]399|300[/hv]

On a good day partner might guess that when you jump to 4♠ at unfavourable vulnerability you hold a long spade suit with lots of playing strength.

Havings read these forums over the last few years, I can confirm that Vampyr and you are certaintly not the only ones having this difficulty. If the Law had actually said: "has the same intended meaning* as, or a more precise intended meaning* then the practice of asking the IBer what (s)he had intended would make sense. As the Law is actually written, it would make more sense to ask the IBer's partner how (s)he had interpreted the IB in order to ascertain the information conveyed by (i.e. the meaning of) the IB.

Not for this LC minute. To remind you, the Law in question says: If there had been any intention to permit the so-called 'liberal interpretation' then the people who wrote the original Law would not have written "the same meaning* as, or a more precise meaning*", nor would they have followed this up with the clarification "(such meaning being fully contained within the possible meanings of the insufficient bid)".

Yes, for example, WBFLC members who presumably don't like the existing Law and issue minutes pretending that it says something else!

I have a 0544 9-count and partner has 15+HCP. If I can show my exact shape at the 3♠ level why would I want to do anything else?

On what hand types does Opener bid 2♠ in your system? If 2♠ is wide ranging in terms of strength and distribution then 3NT has to show a fairly precise hand type, or else Opener will have to guess what to do over it.

In this case the WBFLC minute recommends an approach which directly contradicts the Law, so it can hardly be an official interpretation! The minute says: However, Law 27B1b itself (quoted in full by Sven upthread) includes the phrase: As long as you accept the concept of an insufficient bid having a meaning at all, this wording is explicit and clear. It is therefore surprising that the WBFLC favours an approach of not following its Laws, but at least its use of "recommends" and "in so far as they wish" means that Regulatory Authorities have not been forced to adopt this illegal approach.

No, 4A6 strongly implies that the opponents can assume an alerted bid might fall into an alertable category. It implies that it might be a good idea for the opponents to ask if they want to know more.

Your first hypothesis is definitely true. A lot of 14-counts get opened a strong NT. Some pairs put (14)15-17 on their convention card; others choose not to disclose it (when challenged some will tell you that it's "just bridge"). Of course, players at this level are not strict point counters (which is one reason why the results of computer analyses need to be treated with caution) but in my experience "upgrades" are at least ten times as common as "downgrades".

As you are worried about the 1♣ opening being overloaded, I suggest a variant on option 2 would be to play a variant of TriBal [©MickyB]. 1♦ = natural or any weak NT 1♣ = forcing, natural or 17/18-19 balanced or any game force

I agree with Paul here. Many top players are more interested in card play and bidding judgement, rather than designing bidding systems. Certain methods tend to become popular in particular countries/regions. This is hardly surprising, as most players pick up methods from people they regularly play with and against. Not quite. If the 1NT rebid is 17-19, you have to open 2NT with 20. One of the advantages of playing transfers over 1♣ and using the completion to show a weak NT is that 2NT rebid is not needed in a natural sense so can be used to cater for something else, e.g. good hands with 6 clubs, certain raises.

I agree with this. Partner could have a hand with diamond wastage (say ♦KQx(x)) on which he judges 3NT to be the best chance of making game opposite a 4414 13-count, but that 5♣ will be a safer game than 4NT opposite a 4414 19-count. Even if you don't agree with partner's assessment of the two situations, I think it's clear that 5♣ should be a selection of the final contract. Responder has described his hand precisely so Opener should be selecting the final contract.

So if the comment is heard after the players have taken their cards out of the board, then presumably this information becomes unauthorised. Moreover, if a player only realises the potential context of the information after s(he) has taken his/her cards out of the board, then s(he) did not possess that information before the auction period commenced. In practice, the player will often not know whether a comment relates to the board he is playing or not. 16C1 tells the TD expressly what to do when the UI relates to a board being played or not yet played; it is silent on when the information apparently relates to a different board.

Good point. This suggests to me that the TD should ask the player to explain his reasoning for the call. If: (i) The 5♥ bid was obvious, it appears to have been based on AI, so the TD should allow the table auction to stand. (ii) The 5♥ bid was not the call the TD would have expected based on AI alone, he should use Law 12A1 to adjust for apparent the breach of Law 16A3. This would result in an assigned adjusted score (possibly weighted), not average plus. (iii) If based on AI alone the 5♥ bid was about 50/50, the TD has to form a judgement on balance of probabilities, and applies either (i) or (ii) accordingly.

Well, Ed was claiming that anyone who hears any of this random chatter should call the TD.

This way you also avoid playing in minor suits, as both partners seem to bid the same way whether they are 5-2 or 2-5 in the minors. If playing strong NT openings, there seems little advantage to playing 1♣-1NT as 8-10.

Nice construction.

It will be a lot less close in practice, when partner does not know all four hands and may not be able to read that you have led from a short suit. Some of the time when a major suit lead would beat the contract, partner would have doubled for the lead. A club lead is clear cut in my view.

This leads to the following question: where one meaning is far more common than the other, does that constitute "evidence" for this purpose? I suspect that Gnasher may be right in that the correct explanation was probably "no specific agreement". But before reaching any conclusion the TD needs to investigate, by asking Responder privately why he thought it was take-out and asking Opener privately why he thought it was penalties.

When you play, do you ever hear anything that is being said at another table, Ed? Suppose that you hear Mr X at another table saying "small heart". You have UI about a board you may be yet to play: that Mr X is declaring a hand, and that his partner has at least one heart on an unknown board. Do you call the TD? If not, you are making a judgement which is illegal (your words).

Thanks for the replies. At the table, my partner took the high percentage line of winning the ♦ switch in hand, and lead ♥Q, K, A and then a club to the Q and K. LHO switched to a spade, won with the ace. Now declarer needing just one ruff in hand played ♦K, and another ♦. Then triple bad news: ♦ were 5-2; declarer's RHO had been dealt ♥10 and was able to ruff in front of declarer; and LHO ruffed the♠ return. A team-mate came up with various winning lines, all of which worked on the actual layout, but could not cope with various other live possibilties. I like MikeH's line which is quite an unusual looking play. The early deep finesse is effectively knocking out the danger hand's entry before he can do any damage with a spade ruff. On the bidding ♥10 is his only plausible entry. One could argue that LHO had the opportunity to switch to a spade at trick 2, so a stiff spade is unlikely. All I can say is that he did hold a singleton spade and chose not to switch to it at that point.

The main downside of two-way calls comes in competition: if next hands raises the overcall, it's hard for Opener to cater for both the standard negative double and the strong hands with a long suit. This is why there's much more of a case for playing negative free bids in unbid majors than in unbid minors: after say 1♥-(2♦), if you have to double on an FG hand with 5 or 6 spades, it's not so bad as partner will expect you to hold 4 spades anyway; but if you double on an FG hand with 2 spades and 6 clubs as well, partner will not know whether he should be competing in spades or not.

If I call the TD every time I hear any remark from another table, the TD will be very busy and there will be an awful lot of wasted TD time. If other players do the same, then the EBU will need to employ a lot more TDs. My practical (but apparently illegal) policy is to only call the TD when I judge that the EI I have received might conceivably affect my actions on a hand I may be yet to play.

I'm not surprised. It's hard to imagine that GoogleTranslate would recognise the language of WBFLC-speak. An English translation of the Law 27b1b (including the WBFLC "interpretation") would be most welcome!