gordontd

It's not irrelevant: if the call has not been made, it can be changed even if it's a change of mind. If it has been made, only an inadvertent call can be changed, and only if the other conditions of L25A have been met.

I think L46B1c & L46B3b lead us to the ♠7 being the designated card. It is after all the only card he holds below the rank of an honour.

We use "sympathetic weighting" in an attempt to err in favour of the non-offending side, so the purpose is not to protect the offenders.

That's what we did when I had a partner with whom we had an agreement. I thought it was fairly standard, but apparently not. :rolleyes:

+1

Doesn't 1S show five, and therefore 3S only promise three? (Not that I'm defending the 3S bid entirely).

They ask what the fascination is with the game, and I say that it doesn't get boring because it becomes harder the better one gets at it.

Why four spades? Double & NT just shows a strong hand. The interesting thing is the heart stopper. From South's point of view, North has shown one; from North's, South has shown one. UI tells South that North may not have one.

When I play Asptro I play that a passed hand double shows four spades and a five card minor. That way 2D promises either five spades or five hearts. For an unpassed hand I think it's sensible to have extra (points or shape) when you have 4S + 5m or 4H + 5C.

It's listed in Manning. It's a variation on the 30 board movement with some board-sets having two boards and others having three boards.

I agree. Clearly our Acol world differs in this respect from the Acol on the other side of the world.

It's one of the things that Std Am players find odd about Acol that auctions such as 1S-2D-3D & 1S-2H-3H are not forcing. I've only ever seen the phrase "promises a rebid" in SAYC & other Std Am documents, never in anything about Acol. Even when I've known players play a non-standard treatment of 11+ 2/1s on an Acol base, in my experience they always play it as forcing to 2NT, not "promising a rebid". While it's true that a simple rebid of a major could have up to 15 hcp, that would be unusual. Most such hands would rebid 2NT (forcing, as you say, in the modern style), or might shade a reverse on a 4513 hand with support for partner's minor. The trouble with responder having to rebid 2NT with a 10 count is that it will often get you too high, since Acol openings can be quite light.

This concept of "promises a rebid" is most definitely not Acol, in any of its forms.

No, you should proceed as thought you know it's not natural, which is the case, and then call the TD later if you've been damaged by your partner not having been alerted to its meaning.

I think we'd have reached the point where the board is unplayable, if we tried to go down that route.

You're supposed not to ask for partner's benefit, which is a bit broader still.

I'm not sure about this: we have another situation in the Laws (L45E) where the director decides whether or not a card exposed was a lead. That seems to me to imply that intention is the thing that distinguishes between a lead and a card otherwise exposed, and if so the first card played by the real opening leader was not a lead.

Do they? I can't say I've ever known anyone except David Martin (who was an EBU scoring buff) do this. Similarly, although I've heard you say many times that less experienced players find it easier to understand Butler than Cross-IMPs, I've never heard them say it. Running a weekly IMP game at our club, I do quite often get asked about how the scoring works and the difference between the two, and anyone who is really interested in the answer seems to understand. The thing some of them do have trouble with is the rationale for discarding one or two scores at either end in Butler.

You keep repeating this sort of thing, but it seems to me to be based on a misapprehension. The question is not whether it is more attractive over a natural bid than over an artificial one (since you already know the meaning of the bid).

There's an EBU event that includes honour bonuses (as well as other oddities).

To give more space for the dummy. I've often seen inexperienced players do this, but they get out of it once it's been explained to them why it's a bad idea. In this case North is not inexperienced, but he usually plays in a fairly weak club, so I expect they mis-board quite often but it doesn't get noticed.

No, he would have been in exactly the same position over an alerted artificial 1♦, so I think it's clear the it wasn't the lack of alert that was the problem.

Since we are treating them both as non-offending, consider each pair in turn and assess what score you would give them in other circumstances with sympathetic weighting. With tact :) Rather than saying "I don't think you would make it", say something like "I don't think it's clear that it would always be made".

Fair enough. That doesn't sound at all as though the 1♥ bid was influenced by misinformation due to the failure to alert.

By what process?