campboy

I don't see why it suggests anything of the sort. If virtually nobody plays a strict HCP range, then virtually everybody understands that the HCP range doesn't tell the whole story in their own announcements. So why should they expect opponents' announcements to be any different?

It's not just about winning the match, it's because the VP scale isn't linear. If you're a fair way behind, an average on the last board may get you 3VPs, a top 8VPs and a bottom 1VP. So the odds favour going for a top -- more than they would normally at any rate -- because you stand to gain much more than you stand to lose.

Yes, that's my point. It is a catch 22, if the player doesn't know when he should correct the explanation. Thus we can conclude that this is something players need to know.

The benefit of limiting blitzing is that we don't want how much the top pairs beat weak pairs by to be a major factor in the final ranking of the top pairs. This is especially important if they will have played different weak pairs: how much we beat weak pair A by is at least a fair measure of something, but whether we beat weak pair A by more or less than you beat weak pair B by probably tells us more about the relative strengths of A and B than it does about ours. In Swiss, pairs in contention to win won't be playing more than one or two weak pairs, and which weak pairs (if any) they play has a large amount of essentially random variability, most of which comes from the round 1 draw. In a normal pairs night, especially with a Howell or 3/4 Howell, this is less of an issue because you are much closer to comparing like with like. [edited to change "teams" to "pairs" :)]

In this case there is a law against passing the UI. Calling the TD after partner's explanation is a strong indication that there is something wrong with it, it seems to me.

How do you propose to do that? The timing of a director call is itself an indication of why you've called the director. If partner's just given an explanation, everyone will know what the issue is.

Not in this case. It would be quite wrong for South to call the TD when he first suspects an irregularity, i.e. when the incorrect explanation is made. He may not indicate in any manner that a mistake has been made, until after the final pass. (20F5)

It sounds like at two tables it went p 1NT p p p, at two it started 1♣ 1NT dbl (nige1's and the table which played 1NTx) and at one it started 1♣ dbl. What surprises me is that neither South ran from the double.

I assume that choice 3 means "reject the lead, and don't use either lead restriction at this point".

I once (5-10 years ago) encountered a pair playing this in conjunction with stolen-bid doubles: they opened 2♦, showing a hand too strong to open a strong club, I overcalled 2♠ and the next player doubled, alerted as showing the ace of spades. I'm not sure of the rest of the auction, but someone used Blackwood with a void (not in spades) and they ended up in a making slam :rolleyes:

Thanks for the responses, that makes a lot more sense now :)

I've heard this said before, but don't feel I've ever understood it. What's the reasoning? I'd imagine if playing strong+4 you'd need to be doing something very different to Acol-style 2/1s; perhaps that's why weak+4 is more popular in the UK.

That makes no sense. If a slow pair is allowed to start another board with 3 minutes to go, then yes, they will finish late and get further behind. But all that means is you will end up taking a board away from them next round instead (because 3 minutes is the minimum), and so they will catch up. On the other hand, if there is a different reason why they are behind (had to wait for the table, TD calls, just a difficult set) then they should have no problem catching up if they start the last board with 3 minutes left.

I don't think this is a particularly unfair comparison. If OP wants to switch from strong to weak NT, it is not worth the extra effort of finding and learning a sophisticated 2-way Stayman method that is only going to break even with the transfer methods she already knows how to play.

While a PP might be reasonable if North was aware that partner was on lead, I think it would be quite inappropriate if he asked the question because he thought it was his lead. And it is not an infraction to ask (at an appropriate time) about a specific call -- Law 20F3 permits this.

This is presumably why you're not permitted to play a two-card system in EBU events with short (<7 board) rounds.

You would just leave it as EW +4 and NS -8 if converting to VPs and then VPs for the two sides may add up to less than 20. In a knockout situation, if both teams end up with negative IMPs the team who "lose" by less go through (this is equivalent to a 6-IMP swing on the board).

The problem with your suggested approach is that it is easy to construct situations where a serious error in the contract before the irregularity would be more damaging. Suppose at all vul NS bid to 4♥, which makes exactly. EW use UI to bid 4♠ over this, which is doubled and should go 2 off. But defenders revoke, and get +200 instead of +500. A revoke in 4♥ would have left them with an even worse score (-100), so what would you adjust to here? (And as sfi says, the loss for self-inflicted damage is calculated in IMPs or MPs, not in terms of raw score.)

Yes, 4NT has the same meaning, but the possible issue here is that 3NT has a different meaning (15-19 for one partner but 17-19 for the other).

Well, communicating with partner by means of extraneous comments is illegal. An alert, or an answer to an opponent's question, may well wake partner up to the fact that he made an unintended call, and allow him to correct it, but that is perfectly legal. Of course if a player illegally communicates to partner that he made an unintended call, and partner corrects, the correction itself is perfectly legal. But the communication is still illegal, and may have damaged opponents, so I think we can adjust to what would have happened if the communication had not occurred (and that may include some chance that the player would have woken up anyway). If, here, a 2♠ response would be alertable, I would not adjust even if partner said "did you mean to bid 2♠?", since had he correctly said nothing but alerted the player would still have woken up, so the communication did not damage opponents.

I think asking partner "did you mean to bid that" or similar is illegal communication (73A). However, by the footnote to 25A, if such a question causes the player to realise he bid 2♠ (when he had thought he was bidding 1♠) then he is still permitted to change it. However2, if illegal communication prompts a change of call which damages opponents, I think law 23 applies.

The problem with the current version IMO is that it is not as clear as it might be that it is capability, not possibility, that is relevant. "The player could have known" might be read by some as "the TD thinks there is a chance the player did know", whereas in fact what is intended is (I believe) "the player had enough information and understanding to reach that conclusion, even if he didn't actually do so". I think it would be a better law if it were determined in terms of a hypothetical player. Certainly I would be pretty insulted if a TD declined to adjust the score on the grounds that "I don't think you could have known".

Yes, I know. But I think such a situation is impossible. A reasonable interpretation of "A is demonstrably suggested over B by the UI" is "the expected benefit from choosing A rather than B has significantly increased as a result of the UI". Then this is obviously asymmetric and transitive. So the TD should allow at least one LA as not demonstrably suggested over any of the others (I would allow pass, and also 4♠ if I felt pass was not an LA). It is true that different TDs might allow different actions, but that sort of thing is always going to be possible when the ruling depends on the TD's judgement.

Suggested* over what? If deciding between 4♠ and double, then it's not being a bad save that's the issue, but being a phantom, and the UI makes that more likely. If deciding between pass and double, then obviously the fact that you are more likely to beat 4♥ is not an argument for passing. So I do not think there is any reasonable argument for either 4♠ or pass to be suggested* over double. Whether 4♠ is suggested* over pass, pass is suggested* over 4♠, or neither is less clear. My view is that 4♠ is suggested* over pass. I don't think partner's hesitation marks him with any more defensive strength than he has shown, as he may just have more distribution, so I don't buy the counterargument. But then I have no idea why three different players felt the need to hesitate with that hand, so what do I know? Even if 4♠ is suggested* over pass, it is not clear that pass is an LA (the fact that East at table 3 passed, perhaps because he felt constrained by UI, does not automatically mean we should consider it an LA when ruling at the other tables). *demonstrably

So what? The first revoke can only hurt declarer anyway; I don't think he is under any obligation to find the most costly revoke possible.