jallerton

In the Bermuda Bowl, all explanations must be in writing. It must have taken a while to write all of this out!

My ruling (final two paragraphs quoted above) was: no damage caused in the auction, but there might have been damage in the play. How did the play go?

[hv=d=s&v=0&b=11&a=pp1hp2dp2hppdr3cppp]133|100[/hv] None of the calls were alerted. At the end of the auction, but before making his opening lead, South left the table, apparently to talk to a TD. South arrived back at the table, made his opening lead and the play period started. At trick 2, East had a decision to make in the play. He had observed South talking to the TD and guessed that this was because the 2♦ bid had been intended as conventional. He decided that the meaning of the 2♦ bid might affect his play, so he looked through the N/S convention card to see if this sequence was mentioned. Alas there was no reference to a passed hand 2♦ response on the convention card. East now calls the TD and asks whether he can ask South a question without North being present at the table. How should the TD handle this situation?

[hv=pc=n&s=sthj9865da3c98763&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=p1sp1np2dp]133|200|1NT= up to 12 points [/hv] Your are playing 5-card majors and 2/1 game forcing. IMPs scoring. 2♦ is natural, showing 4+♦ and less than a game force. What do you do now?

In fact RHO won the second round of hearts with the ace and then contributed another low heart when you ruffed the 3rd round of hearts in hand.

Let me explain what happened at my table when I played this hand in 4♠x by West. Diamond lead to the ace. Heart switch, Q, K, low Another diamond, ruffed by West Trump to the K and A Another heart back, won by the Ace. Trump to the Q, drawing the remaining trumps 3rd round of Diamonds, ruffed by West Trump to the Jack. Now East's last spade was cashed, West discarding a club. In the 4-card ending, East held ♣A1076, West held ♥J9 ♣K9. North could not hold on to both ♥10x and ♣QJx. At your table East was declarer, but South led ♦A at trick 1 transposing to the same position after trick 1. South can break up the squeeze by switching to a club at trick 2 and playing another club when in with ♠A. This is why I said in my previous post: "The TD should find out how the play went.."

The correct full explanation would have been something like: "In general, we play 1♦-(dbl)-1♥ as natural. However, we have not specifically discussed whether the meaning of 1♥ is affected by the meaning of the double. We also have a general agreement that in situations where an opponent shows two known suits, bidding one of them asks for a stop." So was there misinformation? Clearly, yes. Whether E/W were damaged by this misinformation is rather less clear. East jumped to 3♠ at unfavourable vulnerability. Presumably this showed reasonable playing strength. In that context, I would expect West to raise to 4♠ anyway with a fifth trump and a decent hand. Also, even if 1♥ is known to be natural, there is still a fair chance that ♥K will be in the hand which has shown (usually) at least 16HCP, so I am not convinced that West would have bid differently with the correct explanation. In my opinion, the damage in the auction for E/W was caused by East's decision to push on to 5♠, but the 5♠ bid was not (claimed to have been) affected by the misinformation. I have a lot more sympathy with East's point that he might have made 10 tricks in 5♠ on a squeeze had he known about the hearts. The TD should find out how the play went and consider adjusting to 5♠x-1 by East, N/S +200.

So if you win do you get to play with yourself?

....and I see that Jun's partner will be a certain BBO forum poster - ahh! Scotland is being represented by another Peggy Bayer player in the Ladies' European Championships in Ostend. Is the selection of all of these younger players good news (lots of good young players coming through) or bad news (lack of depth and/or enthusiasm within the 'established' players)?

The opening post was a simple query, which has been answered in full by more than one replier. It seems a curious decision to move this small thread when there is another current discussion still in 'simple rulings' which has had no fewer than 423 replies so far! You are right that "marionette" is a Bridge World term (quite a useful one in my view). The EBU Orange Book defines the other three of these terms.

OK, good. I must have misunderstood your reply on another thread: In the circumstances described, it is hard to see how the TD could be "a contestant only partly at fault", the circumstance required to award "Average" under the current Laws. In their capacity as contestants, it seems to me that the TD and his partner have done nothing wrong.

Does Stefanie normally play about 50 boards per session?

We do have "transfer responses to 1♣" written on the front of our convention card but the problem is that few opponents read this before the start of a 2-board pairs round. Yes, I know we could say that it is the opponents' fault if they don't read our convention card in advance, but is that how we want the game to be played? Interestingly, the SBU alerting rules contain the following statement: At the other end of the spectrum, I can think of a few opponents who do take the trouble to read the convention card in great detail before starting play, but these opponents seem to take a significant proportion of the time allotted for the round in doing so!

This thread (before it got hijacked by a discussion on Bridgem***s) was inspired by a discussion in another thread in which some very good TDs, including yourself, stated that their practice is to award average (not the only current legal option of average plus) in a particular situation to contestants who have in no way been at fault for a board being unplayable. Whilst I understand that TDs do not want to be accused of giving themselves a good score on an unplayable board, it is far less controversial to not count this board at all in the TD's score. Now imagine a situation where pairs A and B both play 24 boards and both average 50% on the boards they play. Neither pair makes any procedural error. Most people would assume that pairs A and B will be tied in the ranking list, but no! Owing to a half table in the movement, Pair A gets to sit out the last 2-board round and retains its 50% score. Meanwhile Pair B is unable to play the last scheduled round (against average opponents) when both boards become unplayable for some external reason. Pair B receives 60% for both of these boards and suddenly appears ahead of pair A in the ranking list.

Not necessarily. The TD can still award a PP to East for his blatant use of UI.

In the absence of a lengthy discussion, I think most pairs will just assume they are playing the same as they play after the same auction without the first two passes. Theoretically, this might not be optimal and maybe some of the bids might never get used, but it's more practical than agreeing something which at least one partner is liable to have forgotten by the time it first comes up several years later.

There is a special call to show this category of hand. If you search your bidding box carefully you'll find it. There are also some hands with a five-card major where I'd want to stop at the 1-level. For example, Q109xx xx xx 10xxx can make use of the special call I mentioned. OK, you might choose to respond 1♠ if you are NV and partner was the dealer, but even then it's not at all clear that spades will make two more tricks than NT.

I suspect that Frances was expressing her opinion that the overall method is no worse than any of the alternative structures. That's not the same as claiming that there are no hands on which an alternative method might lead to a better contract (very few conventions can legitimately claim this). Playing straight transfers over the 2NT rebid, how are you able to sign off in 3M (implying that Opener is expected to complete the transfer) whilst retaining the ability to find a fit and then still offer 3NT (implying that Opener is expected to complete the transfer or not depending on whether 3-card support is held)? It seems to me you'd need to use 3♣ as a Woolf sign-off and 3♦/♥ as FG transfers. No doubt there must be some hands where Responder wants to sign off in 3 of Responder's suit but I'm struggling to remember any occuring in practice, probably because most such hands would have started with a weak jump shift response in the methods which I (and Frances also) play with most partners. In partnerships where I don't play weak jump shifts, I do have a way of signing off in 3M, but it is sufficiently infrequent opposite 18-19 that I'm surprised to read lalldonn describe it as "huge". For anybody who considers the ability to sign off in 3 of Opener's suit to be important, I have a question. Do you play 1♣-1suit-2NT-3♣ as non-forcing?

In these UI situations, it is always good practice for the TD to ask the player in receipt of UI to explain why he chose the disputed call or play. Not on this occasion, but I'd like to hear what East has to say before assessing the size of any PP.

I know a very good player (originally from Sweden) who strongly advocates this method. The 2M responses show a 4- or 5-card suit (he responded 2♠ to 2♣ holding ♠5432 against me once!). His reasoning is that he believes that there is usually at least a 4-3 major suit fit and that a 4-3 fit will often make more tricks than NT (as the weak hand is often worth no tricks in NT).

I'm not sure how many pairs would consider increasing their chances of coming bottom to be an advantage! Meanwhile, the current method of artificially awarding a 50% score on an unplayed board is a distortion because it arbitrarily makes their score closer to 50%. If a pair is at fault for a board not being played, including through slow play, then under my plan that pair would receive a procedural penalty. A PP of 10% of a top would be the equivalent of the current concept of "average minus".

In the basic Rubensohl structure you mention, there is no need for Responder to choose between looking for a stop and looking for a 4-4 major suit fit. After the transfer to the cue bid, Opener completes the transfer on all hands without a stopper in their suit and bid his lowest 4-card major or 3NT with a stopper. For example, after 1NT-(2♦natural)-3♣: 3♦ = no ♦ stop. Now 4-card majors are bid up the line. Responder does not bid or pass 3NT without a ♦ stop. 3♥ = ♦ stop and 4 hearts 3♠ = ♦ stop and 4 spades, not 4 hearts. 3NT = ♦ stop, no 4-card major A slightly different structure is required after 1NT-(2♠) as now there is no room to bid hearts naturally below 3NT after the transfer cue bid. This problem is overcome by using 1NT-(2♠)-3♠ to show one of the hand types. I also prefer to play a double as take-out orientated. This means that the cue bid and the 3♠ response can be reserved for other hand types, such as a 3-suiter with extreme shortness in their suit.

I suggested announcements on the first round of the auction only as: In general, players tend to know the agreed meanings of opening bids, overcalls and responses (scratch partnerships can announce "no agreement" when appropriate). In the rare cases where someone has forgotten the system and the annoucement provides UI to the bidder, the bidder would have received UI under traditional alerting rules anyway as there would have been an alert of the bid and, quite likely, a subsequent explanation in response to the prompted question. Knowledge of the meanng of each player's first bid is of great assistance to the opponents in understanding the rest of the auction. Players tend to have less firm agreements about the meanings of calls on later rounds of the auction so annoucements impart less useful information to the bidding side's opponents, whilst at the same time are more likely to create UI issues for the bidding side.

Don't you mean: "The only other pair I met last weekend whom I noticed playing transfer responses to 1♣ volunteered it before the round began."?

What do you consider to be "the required information"? I play transfer responses to 1♣ with a few of my partners. In my experience, when I specifically tell the opponents that we are playing transfer responses to 1♣, most seem grateful to be told and a significant proportion then discuss with their partners what defence they play after 1♣-Pass-1♥. On the occasions when I do not tell the opponents about our system and leave them to look at our (quite thorouoghly completed) convention card, it is extremely rare that either opponent mentions anything about our system before the start of the round. (This doesn't stop them commenting on our complicated system when the auction does start 1♣(alerted)-Pass-1♦/♥/♠ (alerted)!) So in practice, the previous method is a lot closer to achieving full disclosure than the current official method. I didn't receive any feedback from the EBU L&E at the time other than in the minutes which said something like "the Committee decided against making any changes for the moment". It's nice to read now that the L&EC probably thought this was a good idea. Has the EBU L&EC started off a file of potential regulations changes to be made during the next major review?