jallerton

Double post - deleted.

1. Double and correct a 2♦ rebid to 2♥. The 109 in partner's long suit are likely to fill a hole and the top cards in the minors are likely to be of use in a heart contract. 2. Yes, 3m is natural and competitive, too weak to act on the previous round. 3. 2NT is for take-out, typically with 2 places to play. Double depends on the partnership's rule for doubles. I normally play it as penalties, albeit that it rarely comes up against non-psyching opponents. At least we keep them honest!

Are you just referring to subsection 3 below, or to subsections 1 and 2 also?

There's also the usual possibility of the TD adjusting if they have gained from the IB. How does using the word "attributable" help? How is a TD supposed to ascertain the purpose attributable to an insufficient bid? Is that any easier than determining the "meaning" of an insufficient bid? The proposed new Law requires the TD to consider both!

If you'll excuse a question from a complete novice, why would AKx AKx K98x AKx bid 3NT quickly "of course"? Pass, redouble and 2NT would all merit consideration. Come to think of it, I prefer all of these three calls to 3NT on this particular hand.

Not necessarily. From South's point of view, North could have a strong hand with 3-card spade support which was intending to stop in 5♠ opposite one key card. Or she could have made the (not unreasonable) assumption that her partner would normally hold at least 2 key cards for his jump to 4♣ and wanted to find whether he held a third key card for grand slam purposes. Or, if they were playing "1430" responses to RKCB then she could in fact stop in 5♣ opposite one key card.

You may ask, but forum rules prevent me (or anyone else) from being able to answer!

My Law Book still contains a "very unfortunate" wording in Law 27. I've had this version for nearly ten years, but I didn't realise that it had been corrected so long ago!

I'm fairly sure that the regulation is trying to reduce UI issues when a player does not possess a card of the right category. Apparently, holding 753 and wanting to follow with an even spot to discourage, certain players had a tendency to break tempo whilst they searched for an even spot card. Playing standard/reverse signals, although you might want to play low from 987 tripleton or high from 432 tripleton, it is perceived to take less long for players to find their lowest or highest card. Your observation about discards is correct. It is common for players to play out of tempo anyway when they make their first discard, so a pause before a ♦3 discard does not convey the message "I wish I could play an even ♦". In principle I like the idea in your final paragraph, but the players who have discussed in this detail how to deal with the "wrong" spot cards are generally not the ones who have problems following in tempo!

I share your concerns about the wording of this regulation. In an old version of the Orange Book, the restriction applied only to specifically odd-even signals (in following suit), with one of odd & even being encouraging and the other suit preference. That was a perfectly clear regulation! Them some bright spark worked out that there could be similar analogous situations and decided to make the regulation more generic. However, I find the current wording "dual meaning signals" to be particularly unfortunate, in that it could be interpreted as not catching the original method it was intended to catch, whilst arguably catching by accident some mainstream signalling methods. Suppose West leads an ace and East follows with the queen. How would you describe this signal? Description 1: top of a sequence. That's a single meaning, surely. Or is it? Description 2: denies the king and shows the jack. So the queen has two meanings; so does it not come under the umbrella of a "dual meaning"? As you will have noted 1 have described the same standard signalling method in two different ways. Or take your example when someone has shown a long suit and high/low cards are suit preference. It's OK to agree that a middle card is also suit preference (maybe for the suit led!), but it is described as "encouraging" then that is apparently a different meaning than either neutral or "suit preference" and suddenly the pair is playing a "dual meaning signal"! Perhaps it would be better for the restriction to be placed on "dual message signals" rather than "dual meaning signals!.

OK, thanks. Now consider an alternative situation. Declarer "pulls out the wrong card" from his hand (quite a common occurrence if you believe all of the comments made in post mortems). Assuming that the TD is satisfied that the card pulled out is not the one declarer had intended to play, does the unintended card become regarded as played anyway if it meets the criterion specified in Law 45C2, namely "held face up, touching or nearly touching the table;"? Or does Law 48A's "Declarer is not subject to restriction for exposing a card" have any relevance? "I didn't mean to expose that card, partner."

Declarer leads a club from dummy, RHO follows; declarer now reaches for ♣K from hand but ♣10 drops out into what looks to be the "played position". Declarer immediately says something like "I didn't intend to play that card". Is ♣10 deemed to be played under Law 45C2 or is declarer allowed to pick up ♣10 and play another legal card under Law 48A?

This is a moot point. There has been a clear breach of Law 73C. If it is judged that Law 16 has not been breached using the alternative interpretation, then the TD just uses Law 12A1 (or Law 23) to adjust for the damage caused by the breach of Law 73C.

Most bridge events have a time allocation for a the round, whether it be a 2-board MP pairs, 8-board Swiss or 16- or 20-boards per match teams round robin. The longer the set, the more potential exists for playing the "routine" boards quickly, thus allowing more time for all four players on difficult/interesting boards. If the earlier boards in the set are played quickly, then no time problems arise, and I have no objection to players taking advantage of the extra time available on later boards. However, suppose that an opponent takes a disproportionate amount of time on early board(s) in the set. What is the best approach for dealing with this? Specific examples: 1. Playing a 16-board match scored by VPs in which the CoC apply automatic slow play penalties. Declarer is in a cold 3NT and spends 15 minutes playing out the hand in search for an unlikely second overtrick. Is this acceptable behaviour? If not, should the defenders call the TD; and if so at what point? 2. Playing an 8-board Swiss match contested by four very experienced tournament players with 55 minutes allowed per round. On the first board the auction starts Pass-Pass-3♦-4♠. Now the dealer thinks for 10 minutes. Is this acceptable behaviour? If not, should the opponents call the TD; and if so at what point?

Support doubles in diamonds are of dubious merit. It seems harsh to criticise someone for playing a superior method!

Does it? Surely if holding a 5-card spade suit with ♦A/K he should be leading a higher spade as then he should know that a second round of spades will not be standing up. This leads to a familiar question in MI cases: is it relevant to the ruling that the player's defence was incorrect even in the context of the information supplied at the table?

It depends on what you have agreed with partner and, critically, whether you have a rebid available for this hand type in your system having opened a of a suit. This may depend to some extent on the range of your 1NT opening. With some partners I'll always open 1NT with 5M332 hands in range because we have no other way of bidding the hand after 1M-1NT or 1♥-1♠. With other partners I have a choice and then it depends on the hand, the major suit held, sometimes even the vulnerability and/or position.

Your proposed meaning for 4♦ has some merit, but I consider using a jump in partner's suit to show a slam try in RHO's suit to be utterly ridiculous. On the actual bidding problem I would bid 5♠ natural and invitational. Maybe 5♥ should also show a strong one-suiter (and once in a while we'll want partner to declare to protect his ♥Kx), but we probably haven't discussed its meaning.

Yes, that's a reasonable option, especially with 4=4=3=2 in that order. If 4=4=2=3, the chance of 2♦ being a sensible spot is much lower. It's probably also more attractive at matchpoints, when the frequency of the gains is more important than the severity of the stupidity of the contract you end up in when partner doesn't make the hoped-for response.

I'm not Gordon, but the invitation to correct you is too hard to resist! The TD has to make a judgement whether there was an infraction or not. If he judges there was not, the table result stands. If he judges that there was an infraction, MI in this case, he proceeds with the next part of the ruling: to assess the damage (if any) caused by the infraction. 75% of one off and 25% of making would be a legal ruling, but only if he judged MI to exist and those were the probabilities he attached to West finding the different lines of defence being found if given the correct explanation.

The problem for TDs is that players have a tendency to make self-serving statements. We see this in UI and unintended/intended call situations; MI cases are no different. If two partners give different explanations I would expect one of them to have got the system wrong; in the absence of other knowledge I would assign a 50% probability to each player having got the system right. However, experience shows that when there is a disagreement of this nature, the offending side seem to tell the TD in about 75% of cases than the explanation was correct and than the bidder had got the system wrong. This implies to me that there are regular instances of players bending the truth in order to get a ruling in their favour. Yes, you do not want to accuse players of lying and any statements made to the TD are evidence, but they are not conclusive evidence. Only relevant if both (a) the TD concludes there was MI; and (b) the correct explanation would have given this West exactly the same information as the West had at the other table you mention.

The trouble is that there is simply not enough room on a convention card for a regular prospective international partnership to describe all its agreements. The Scottish Bridge Union convention card (based on the EBU 20A) allows more room for supplementary details than the one now recommended for use in England (EBU20B) or the ACBL card, but when you consider that system files run to scores, sometimes hundreds, of pages (and that implicit agreements may not even be in the system file), you have to appreciate that the omission of a bidding sequence or carding agreement from a convention card does not imply that the partnership had no agreement.

To profit from playing 2 of a major suit compared with 1NT you need to be making an extra trick in the suit contract (whether the contract makes or not). Yes a 4-4 fit will normally provide that extra trick but surely that is not the case with 4-3s with no outside shortage in the 3-card trump holding: you are quite right that 1NT contracts are easier to play than defend and on average tend to make more tricks than double dummy analysis would suggest. In essence, using Stayman on 4432 hands is a gamble than partner holds a 4-card major (approx. a 50% chance I believe, depending on 1NT opening style) when you will usually, but not always, gain by finding your 4-4 fit.

Either West has given a mistaken explanation to South, or East has given a mistaken explanation to North. The TD should investigate which. I would not expect this sequence to be recorded on a pair's convention card, so the TD should start by asking the pair if can provide its system file. I would expect most pairs in international trials to have a system file, but if the pair cannot produce one, the TD should have regard to Law 21b(1)(b):

In principle, the answer to your question is yes, but in practice the auction will often be too high to make the second jump sensible. If the auction commences 1♠-4♣, Opener's jump to 5 of a red suit does imply a void, but a lot of expert players would attach a more specific meaning: Exclusion RKCB. A consultative return splinter would make more sense at a lower level. For example you might play mini-splinters by a passed hand. If the auction goes (uncontested) Pass-1♠-3♣-4♦ then that would be a splinter; as you point out the 3♣ bid did not specify the relative holdings in the red suits, so a return splinter asks partner to judge the wastage there.