jallerton

Conditionally, LHO has already decided on the final contract: he's about to bid 6♠ opposite sufficient key cards. He must has at least 3 key cards to bid 4NT in this auction; RHO has shown one and they won't be trying for grand as we hold the other key card. If dummy has an undisclosed singleton opposite AQ to length, declarer won't be worth his 4NT bid but the contract will be cold anyway. I hate the idea of making partner guess which suit to lead from when I might be able to help.

"No agreement" is not alertable. Paul tells us that there was no agreement about 3♦ ,so the failure to alert 3♦ was not an infraction. Therefore, I don't think that any assigned/weighted score should be derived from auctions where West doubles 3♦. There was an infraction: North/South should have explained that there was no agreement about 3♦ in response to East's question (I suspect that East realised that 3♦ might well not be natural, hence her question). It all comes down to which opening lead East would/might have made had she known that there was "no agreement", but in my view the only assigned scores included in the weighting should be 3NT making various numbers of tricks. Although it seems fairly obvious to lead a diamond on that East hand (however 3♦ is described), I'd like to hear East's reasoning for finding a heart lead at the table, to estalish whether a similar line of reasoning might have been found had she received the "no agreement" explanation.

No. With a good raise to 2M, you bid 1M-2M "constructive" and partner passes if he declines the invitation. 1M-2[M-1]-2M-further bid implies a strong invitation, just short of a game force.

Sorry, I couldn't see the word "claim" in the text of your opening post. The word "claim" does appear in the title, but the WBFLC tell us to concentrate on the text and ignore headings! Assuming there was a claim, I rule as follows: I rule that the Laws of Rubber Bridge apply and that the players have no right to request that some other basis (such as the Laws of Duplicate Bridge) can be used to judge the claim. Ed has kindly looked up the relevant Law for me, so I apply the Rubber Law 69 he quotes above: declarer plays the hand out ouvert and can choose to play the heart suit however he likes. The players get on with the play and the TD doesn't need to worry about the wooly concept of "normal" lines of play.

Given the evidence available from the "counting" of the diamond suit, I would temporarily rate a declarer of this standard well below "world class" for the purposes of adjudicating this hand.

There is nothing in the opening post to suggest that declarer had faced his hand. Does declarer's statement constitute a claim? "Well, I suppose you take your diamond, and then I have eight top tricks" implies to me that declarer is saying that he will claim the rest if and when the defence cash a fifth diamond trick. As the defender on lead will not be playing another diamond, he should lead a card of his choice and play should then continue.

It will also reduce the number ot teams who know their exact VP score by around 99%.

Nigel did put the word "always" in bold, so let's try a couple of sequences on you, Andy. 1. (2NT)-Pass-(3♥alerted). Do you always ask about the meaning of the alerted 3♥? 2. Suppose that you have read the opponents' convention card and have seen that they play a Multi 2 ♦ opening. RHO opens 2♦, duly alerted. Do you always ask in this situation? It's better to have a rule that you always ask when you (think you) might not know the meaning of the alerted call. I agree that people should be asking irrespective of the contents of their hand, but the EBU Orange Book still seems to discourage this practice, even after the relevant section was toned down a few years ago.

Really? Under which Law(s)?

It sounds as though you don't underlead aces often enough then. Are you? Partner needs to be awake too. I remember a hand from the distant past. A teammate found the only lead to trouble a small slam, low from Axx. Dummy had K10xx and declarer Jx. Declarer played low from dummy; partner, with Q98x put in the 8.

Yes, what did I miss? Perhaps you were trying to make a different point, but I don't agree with your statement as written.

In that case, the "accepted procedure" needs to be reviewed. The 2007 Laws require a TD to determine "logical alternatives" and to establish those the TD needs to know which calls would be seriously considered by a player's peers, and whether it is reasonable to assume that "some" people might actually select these calls in practice. If the TD can hear the pollees' thought processes, he is far better placed to judge what the logical alternatives might be.

Why? As you have to press the N/S or E/W button anyway, it takes virtually no extra effort to record the declarer accurately. Similarly with the lead, you have to press two buttons anyway. Some people don't usually remember what the opening lead was, but presumably you do not fall into that category!

How strong are the opponents? What was the range of my 1NT rebid? If I've shown 12-14, it's slightly easier for the defence to place the remaining high cards than if I've shown 11-13 say. I can certainly imagine circumstances in which I'd win the opening lead in dummy and play a low club. If LHO is 4234 with ♣HHxx or the equivalent and RHO fails to play high, LHO needs to switch to a spade now to break up the squeeze.

We don't adjust to what would/might have happened had there been no hesitation (or other UI). We adjust to what would/might have happened had the hesitator's partner chosen a call compliant with Laws 16A/73C. In the case referred to at the start of this thread, it's not possible for E/W to arrive in 4♥ by another route. Either the 4♥ bid is judged to be legal (in which case the table result stands) or it isn't, in which case East should have passed out 4♦; this being the third consecutive pass, 4♦ is deemed to be the final contract in computing the assigned score.

Sven: are you trying to compare this UI case with an illegal deception case? Bluejak's statement (which you have highlighted in red) is relevant in all cases, but perhaps you are misunderstanding the application of this principle. In all cases, you need to ask yourself. 1. What was the infraction? 2. What would/might have happened had the infraction not occurred? In a UI case, the infraction (assuming there was one) was not the UI itself, it was the action taken by the player in possession of the UI. That is a breach of Laws 16A/73C, so the TD should not assign any weighting to a putative auction in which the player makes the same call or play at that stage. In an illegal deception case, the infraction was the illegal deception itself. When assigning an adjusted score, the TD might decide that there is still a possibility that his/her opponent would have found the same play anyway. If so, assigning a weighting to the same result that occurred at the table is appropriate. In a misinformation case, the infraction was the misinformation itself. When assigning an adjusted score, the TD might decide that there is still a possibility that his/her opponent would have found the same call or play anyway. If so, assigning a weighting to the same result that occurred at the table is appropriate.

Your impression is correct. The AC is suggesting a Reveley ruling, which is illegal. If the AC finds that 4♥is the only logical alternative, or that the UI could not demonstrably suggest bidding on over passing, the table result should be allowed to stand 100%. If the AC finds that pass is a logical alternative and than the UI demonstrably suggests bidding on, the assigned score is based on East passing out 4♦ 100% of the time. If the number of tricks 4♦ might make is unclear, then a weighted score would be appropriate, e.g. 75% of 4♦= + 25% of 4♦-1. In this particular case, I'd expect 4♦ to make 10 tricks virtually always, so I'd assign the same 100% of 4♦= for both sides whether weighted scores are allowed or not.

OK, no-one is prepared to answer my question. I'll have to draw my own conclusion. Automation works best for events where only one table is being shown on BBO and sufficient people are sufficiently self-motivated to sign up. When there are multiple tables, automated sign up is not good enough by itself; the commentators need to be informed which table to go to. Why? Let me give you an example. Last week, I used the automated sign-up procedure for the EBL Champions Cup. This is a very strong event. Only twelve teams, but the participants included many world champions. There were four tables being shown on BBO, so I was a little disappointed to see that only two other commentators had signed up for that session. I was automatically ungagged, so the software was working well in that respect, but there was nobody to tell me which table to go to. I chose the room showing Fantoni-Nunes against Upmark-Wrang as there was only one other commentator there. A quick review of vugraph records suggests that other table in that match seemed to have three or four commentators, whilst the other match being shown had one commentator in one room and no commentary whatsoever in the other. This would never have happened under Roland's watch as the commentators would have been assigned to particular tables in advance; if assigning on the day, he would note which rooms were lacking commentators and approach potential commentators to join or ask people already commentating to move tables to balance the numbers. Now I know that there are a few events where the organisers are trying to set up their own system (as JanM is doing for the ABC Nationals in a few weeks' time) but these events are the exception rather than the norm, but it should be noted that these assignments rely on the work done by real people, not computers.

Interesting. Perhaps you need to talk to:

This is a matter for partnership agreement. However, even if you prefer to use scramble, you can still get part of the benefit of Lebensohl: 2NT = two places to play or a weak 3♥ bid immediate 3♥= constructive, not quite strong enough to bid on the previous round.

Really? People get quite a lot of the alerting regulations wrong (e.g. doubles), but announcing Stayman after a 1NT opening is something that virtually everyone gets right.

Are you saying that, where you play, there are many people who respond 2♥ to Stayman with 4-4 in the majors and many othes who respond 2♠ on the same hand type?

Playing with screens, I wouldn't alert it; I would just write down the agreement and show it to my screenmate whenever we respond 2♥ or 2♠ to Stayman. Playing without screens, we have to decide whether this constitutes a "potentially unexpected meaning". I think that if partner has announced the 2♣ bid as "Stayman", you are fairly safe alerting the 2♥/2♠ bids, as the opponents would expect partner to hold 4 cards in the major bid anyway.

This all seems very sensible. The same basic structure can be played after the (uncontested) sequence 1♥-1♠-3♥.

Thanks for the replies. I had this hand at the table. I passed, assuming that my partner had a long clubs suit, with the suit not good enough for a 'red' pre-empt. Alas, this was the full hand: [hv=pc=n&s=sk63hakj742dqj2ca&w=sq95ht95dk74ckj52&n=s7h86dat9cqt98743&e=sajt842hq3d8653c6&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=pp1sdr4cppp]399|300[/hv] The good news was that partner made 4♣. The bad news was that 4♥ could not be beaten (on the favourable lie it takes a trump lead to stop 12 tricks). My team-mates said I should have bid 4♥, so it's good to see responses from some people who did not know all four hands. You were correct! To be fair, this was the last set of a knockout match and the opponents were trying to claw back a significant deficit (and with the help of this board, they almost succeeded).