iviehoff

You fail to mention the key points on which this case will turn. If the announcement was slow, the late announcement was a purported correction of misinformation, the director should be called, and the fact that partner bid before is now AI and we are in the situation as I describe it. If partner was fast to make his double, then that is his fault and I'm happy with me being forced to assume partner was correctly informed at the time of his bid, whatever stupid that might mean for me.

A footnote to Law 25A was added in 2011: "A player is allowed to replace an unintended call if the conditions described in Law 25A are met, no matter how he may become aware of his error." This includes illegal acts by partner. Thus we must allow the correction of the unintended bid, and concentrate on penalising the illegal act. (It was commonly argued this was the correct interpretation even before the footnote.)

I think this is just too counterintuitive to be the realistic approach. An announcement, the fact of which is AI, is made. When later this announcement is corrected, you are saying it will be your fault if you fail to assume that partner had the corrected information from the start. If that's going to be the basis of rulings, a lot of people who think in the manner of normal people will be very upset, but it just won't make sense to them. I think that also, if you think it through, this philosophy will lead to you asking explanations even though your partner has just asked for them, to make sure that you are only using AI, precisely in case something later goes wrong. And I don't think this is desirable.

I believe I already covered this point. If partner decides to ignore the explanation he was given by proper procedure in the correct and public manner, and looks instead at a convention card and decides to believe that instead, he does that at his own risk. That is because he can rely upon the explanation that was given to him following proper procedure, even if it subsequently turns out to be incorrect. I therefore should also be able to rely that the information he was acting upon was the information that was given in the proper correct and public manner. You mention the possibility of him having a quiet clarification discussion with an opponent, which would be an irregularity. The correct method of getting a corrected explanation is to call the TD and getting a proper revised explanation in a public manner that I can rely upon as AI also. So I think such irregular clarification activities must also be treated in the same way.

The difference is between using an inference from the fact that your partner did not ask the meaning of an alerted call - UI - and using the fact of an announcement - AI. Also You are going too far in saying an opponent "alerts to show the call is not natural". You don't know what the alert is until you find out why. An alert could be a natural bid but with some negative inference they feel the need to draw to your attention. In the first case, partner bid without asking; you then asked and got a wrong explanation, subsequently corrected. It is using UI to assume that partner bid on any basis other than the correct explanation, because it is UI to you that partner did not ask and therefore you can't think what he might know. But if partner had asked and got the wrong explanation, then you should assume he bid on the basis of the wrong explanation, because otherwise we back ourselves into the corner of saying that you have to ask again.

I agree with Pran that if you are required to do or not do something, that is AI to you and you can think why you might have been required. Yes, leaving the penalty card on the table does have the potential to have your cake and eat it, but whether it succeeds in doing so depends upon what the UI suggests. Sometimes the UI might restrict your opponent to playing one of the cards you want him to play, while retaining the penalty card on the table to your advantage. Sometimes the UI might restrict your opponent into playing just the card you don't want him to play. It is up to you to make this judgement, it isn't reliably a heads I win tails you lose situation.

Your example is inconsistent with your explanation. What is important is that partner does not obtain information from knowing about the withdrawn call. Therefore the replacement call can carry additional information that was not in the withdrawn call. If the replacement call has less information than the withdrawn call, then partner has learned something by knowing about the withdrawn call. An 8+ call is indeed more precise than a 4+ call. The 8+ call contains more information than the 4+ call because it excludes 4-7. That is why, as you correctly say, you can't replace an 8+ call with a 4+ call. (Though if he bid 2C knowing full well that partner opened 2N, and merely got his arithmetic of sufficient bids wrong, then arguably he can replace it without restriction, if you believe him.)

No, I don't think so. This is different because here there was an announcement that the bid was hearts, and that is AI. That is different from your partner failing to ask about a bid, which is UI. You know exactly what your partner knew when your partner made the bid, because both the fact of and content of the announcement is AI. Now the attempted knock-down of this would have your partner then piping up saying "Well I knew the announcement was nonsense, but I wasn't helping the opposition out by drawing this to their attention. I knew that you'd be protected from the consequences by the MI laws if you didn't also manage to work that out and see what I was up to." But I think that is silly, because having got the announcement the player can rely on the information given, even if he knows it is wrong, and he is taking an unnecessary risk by saying he knows it is wrong. There is an intermediate case, which is the more common one than these extremes, and is the more difficult one. In fact I thought about writing about it in my previous post, but had second thoughts. This is where your partner explicitly asks about a bid (likely alerted). Now players are supposed to ask for themselves, not for their partners, but it seems to be taken as read that you don't have to repeat your partner's request for explanation, and so the information provided by one partner's question is treated as AI to both the partnership. Now one can make an argument that the fact that one's partner asked for and heard the explanation is UI, only the content of the explanation is AI, how it arose is not. But I think that is twisting things in a silly way to make it different from the announcement case above. I think it is best to treat it just like the announcement above, and that's what people seem to do.

More accurately, you should assume your partner didn't "need" ask precisely because they already knew just what the agreement was, which could have come from reading the card, knowing the opponents, being good at mindreading, or whatever. Not, didn't ask because they didn't need to know, didn't realise they needed to know, didn't care to know, or any other reason for not "needing" asking.

I agree with all that.

As well as operations, mispull that someone was not in time to change is a possibility. Most likely mispull is partner's double thinking he was passing. But partner can take responsibility for that if it turns out to be the case.

I think we are trying our hardest to demonstrate that there are no loopholes for cheats to take advantage of, which requires an exploration of what potential loopholes can exist. Lamford has had to add extra fortuitous facts indicating how difficult it is to use this course of action for cheating. The wording of Law 23 makes it very difficult for a mode of cheating to exist. If a route is useful to cheats, then the "could well have known" test surely applies. In the present case, the difficulty is the counterfactual for adjustment. Counterfactuals for adjustment tend to be obscure when the action giving rise to adjustment is the first action in the auction. Maybe that should be a reason for making an artificial adjustment on this occasion.

What Lamford said.

But red against green is the ideal time to psyche a strong bid out of turn. Opponents rarely allow out of turn strong bids to stand unrectified.

And by chance no other NS was playing a multi which is why there was that string of -1100s. S's psyche also caters for his partner opening 1N, 2N, 4S, 3S, 1S, etc. That is sufficient for awareness of potential damage. I suppose that if in the present case there is no chance that this NS was ever going for a telephone number, you might just be right. Are we sure that this partnership would routinely pass partner's multi with S's hand? I might check whether on a weighted score there is still damage.